Symphorian of Autun

Saint Symphorian the Martyr was a young man of a noble family of Autun in Gaul, killed for faith in Christ in the second century, around 180, at about twenty. The Church remembers him on 22 August. He is invoked, among other things, by those who have an insect in the eye.

His parents, Faustus and Augusta, raised him in the Christian faith, though Autun was then a pagan city where the cult of Apollo, Diana and Cybele flourished. According to legend, one day Symphorian refused to give honour to the statue of Cybele, carried through the city, and even mocked it. He was at once seized and brought to trial, where he said he believed in one God. He was sentenced to death, and his mother Augusta accompanied him on his last way, advising and strengthening him in faith. He was beheaded around 180. According to legend, before the execution he was put to a torment: scorpions and insects bit his face.

Around 450 a basilica was built on the place of his martyrdom, through which his veneration spread beyond Autun. In the Merovingian era he was regarded as a national saint, and twenty-⁠seven communes in France bear his name.