Gatianus of Tours

Gatianus (Catianus, Gatianus, Gratianus; French: Cassien, Gatien, Gratien) (3rd century CE) was the founding bishop of the see of Tours.

Life

According to Christian historians, during the consulship of the Emperor Decius and Vettus Gratus (250 CE), Pope Fabian sent out seven bishops from Rome to Gaul to preach the Gospel: Gatianus to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturnin to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Austromoine to Clermont, and Martial to Limoges. A community of Christians had already existed for many years in Lyon, where Irenaeus had been bishop.

Gatianus devoted half a century to evangelization, against the objections of the Gauls. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he managed anyway to gather apostles round him, whom he sent out to establish churches, and at his death the diocese of Tours was securely established. As with other founders of the seven Catholic churches of Gaul, especially Martial, Gatianus became confounded in later Christian mythology with the "seventy-two disciples of Christ", alleged to have been sent into Gaul during the first century, by Saint Peter himself. Other details of his biography, while not as easily disprovable, are also largely legendary. Gregory of Tours, writing in the 6th century, is a more dependable source for the few biographical details concerning his predecessor. According to the Catholic historian Mons. Louis Duchesne (Christian Worship: Its Origin and Evolution), the traditions preserved at Tours furnished Gregory with only the name of Gatianus and perhaps the 50-year extent of his episcopacy; it was by comparison with a brief early biography of Saturninus of Toulouse (Passio S. Saturnini) that Gregory arrived at the date 250, for the beginning of Gatianus' ministry at Tours (History of the Franks, 1.30).