ST. LUCIAN

07 JanuarySouth transept Spire-G35
Patron Saint: City of Lusciano Symbol: Palm, the Bible

St. Lucian, learned and controversial priest, died a martyr at Nicodemia on January 7th, 312, during the persecutions of Maximinus. He expounded his exegetic work throughout the East, starting from Antioch, revealing with it an extreme and tormented need for accuracy in the traditional Holy Scriptures. From the end of the 4th century onward, his Lucian Recension of the Old and New Testaments had become the standard text for many Churches. The work that still remains essential today for understanding Lucian and his doctrinal influence is the essay by G. Bardy, Recherches sur Saint Lucien d’Antioche et son école, published in Paris in 1936. In 330, to pay homage to his mother Helena, the emperor Constantine founded Helenopolis. There they honored, and continued to do so in time, the body of St. Lucian. Some traditions say that Providence returned the relics of St. Lucian from Niodemia to Helenopolis by a miraculous dolphin. What is more certain is that Constantine, just before he died, was baptized in 337 by the bishop Eusebius near Lucian’s tomb. Nonetheless, though scanty and fragmented, the information handed down about Lucian is important. This Saint, pained witness in the search for God, gave testimony, with the presence of memory, to the passage of an empire. A few emperors in the centuries that followed attended (and still today some attend) Mass for a political price. Only when his earthly life had practically come to an end, the emperor Constantine sealed the new faith revering his mother Helen and taking on as witness St. Lucian.