Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/November 29
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Saint Saturnin of Toulouse (in Latin, Saturninus; Sernin in Modern French; in Galicia, Sadurniño; in Navarra, Cernin; and, in Spain, Saturnino or Serenín), with a feast day entered for November 29, was one of the "apostles to the Gauls" sent out (probably under the direction of Pope Fabian, 236 - 250) during the consulate of Decius and Gratus (250-251) to Christianize Gaul after the persecutions under Emperor Decius had all but dissolved the small Christian communities. Fabian sent out seven bishops from Rome to Gaul to preach the Gospel: Gatien to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturnin to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Austromoine to Clermont, and Martial to Limoges.
Saturnin is styled the first bishop of Tolosa (Toulouse). The lost Acts of Saturninus were employed as historical sources by the chronicler Gregory of Tours. The martyrology gave a genealogy for Saturnin: the son of Aegeus, King of Achaea, by his wife Cassandra, who, herself, was the daughter of Ptolemy, King of the Ninevites. The Acts placed Saturninus in the 1st century, made him one of the 72 disciples of Christ, placed him at the Last Supper. The detail from the Acts that is selected for remembering today describes his martyrdom: to reach the Christian church Saturninus had to pass before the capitol (still the Capitole de Toulouse), where there was an altar, and according to the Acts, the pagan priests ascribed the silence of their oracles to the frequent presence of Saturninus. One day they seized him and on his unshakeable refusal to sacrifice to the images they condemned him to be tied by the feet to a bull which dragged him about the town until the rope broke. (Tellingly, the identical fate was ascribed to his pupil Saint Fermin whose site of martyrdom is at Pamplona.)
The bull, it is said, finished at the place since named Matabiau (that is, matar ("the killing") and biau or bœuf ("bull"). An inversion of this martyrdom, the tauroctony, the "killing of the bull," is precisely the central rite of Mithraism, the most important icon in the mithraeum, a depiction of Mithras in the act of killing a bull. The tauroctony was either painted or depicted in a sculptural relief, sometimes on the altar. Two Christian women (puellae remembered as "les Puelles") piously gathered up the remains and buried them in a "deep ditch", that they might not be profaned by the pagans. It is not beyond possibility, in this part of Gaul, where even today the greatest bell among many in Toulouse is honored with the name "Le Grand Taur," that the deep ditch was in fact a mithraeum.
The site, said to be "where the bull stopped" is on the rue du Taur ("Street of the Bull"). The street with the Mithraic name is one of the original Roman cross streets running straight from the Capitole now to the Romanesque basilica honoring St. Saturnin ("St Sernin").
Attributes: A bishop's mitre, a bishop being dragged by a bull, a bull
Patronage: Toulouse, France
Prayer:
