Terentius of Luni

Terentius was bishop of Luni in Italy in the sixth century, venerated in the Western tradition, above all in the region of Lunigiana and in Garfagnana. He is thought to have been the sixth bishop of the city. According to tradition he was a Scot and was killed by robbers. He is commemorated on 15 July. His veneration is local.

According to tradition, his body came in a miraculous way to the place called San Terenzo ai Monti. There, between 728 and 729, the Lombard Trasuald, a devout man, raised a church in fulfillment of a vow. Some scholars think that the story confuses Terentius with another saint, killed much later by the Vikings of Hastein. Most probably Terentius suffered because he tried to bring to the faith the many Arian Lombards living in Lunigiana. There his veneration arose, at the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the next, as seen from the churches dedicated to him in the region of Garfagnana.

According to the local diocese, Terentius was a native of Luni. His name is mentioned in a letter of Pope Pelagius I to the bishops of Tuscany.

It seems that in the ninth century his body was moved from the church at Avenza to the church at San Terenzo ai Monti, to keep it from the raids and desecration of the Saracens. For the same reason the relics were later taken to Reggio Emilia, after having been found, in 1673, during the rebuilding of the church, badly damaged by an earthquake. Today they rest in a silver casket on the main altar of the church of San Terenzo ai Monti in Fivizzano, built in 1852 by Michele Bertoli and his son Teofilo. The sources do not explain how the move to Reggio Emilia fits with the present place of the relics.