Prudentius

Holy Martyr Prudentius was a deacon at Narbonne in Gaul (today in France) and died a martyr in the third century, probably around the year 257, in the persecution of Valerian.

He came from a noble family of the city and was raised a Christian. He studied letters with great success and was ordained deacon. A nineteenth-⁠century biographer writes that he shone in the assembly of the faithful like the sun at noon by his teaching and the holiness of his life, attested by many miracles. This stirred up enemies. They loaded him with chains, tortured him cruelly and broke his skull with a mason's hammer on 7 September 257. It is not known whether his murderers were barbarians or Roman soldiers.

The Christians buried him, but his enemies pulled out the body and left it to be torn by birds of prey. His relics worked miracles, were found in a church at Narbonne and taken in 883 to the abbey of Bèze; during the Norman invasions they were kept in the cathedral of Saint-⁠Étienne at Dijon, then returned to the abbey. Later they were brought back to Narbonne, where they lie in an elaborate reliquary in the cathedral. He is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint of the undivided Church, without synodal canonization.