Rusticianus

Saint Rusticianus, hierarch, was bishop of Brescia in Lombardy, placed by tradition between the second half of the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh. The chronology of his episcopate is uncertain and the sources differ; the proposals do not exclude that the bishop lived in the years of the Lombard invasion. No certain facts of his life are known. He is regarded as the nineteenth bishop of Brescia to hold the see in the church of Saint Andrew.

Already in the Middle Ages his name appears beside those of Saints Faustinus and Jovita, Apollonius and Philastrius, in eleventh-⁠century litanies and in the Ordo ad visitandum infirmum, used at the Rogation days and at the baptismal liturgy of the vigils of Pascha and Pentecost. His veneration is also attested by six manuscript calendars of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. He was buried in the church of Saint Apollonius. Between 970 and 975 the margrave Adalbert Atto of Canossa had part of his relics, with those of Saints Apollonius and Ursicinus, moved to the crypt of the new basilica at Canossa. Around 1150 the skull and other bones of Saints Rusticianus and Silvinus were placed under the high altar of the church of Saint Andrew. In 1502 the remains were moved to the church of San Zeno al Foro, in a marble urn. He is venerated in the Catholic Church.