Our Father among the Saints Dionysius, Bishop of Paris, the Martyr.
Saint Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks, relates that the holy Pope Fabian sent seven missionary Bishops to evangelize Gaul in the reign of Decius, under whom Saint Fabian himself was beheaded in the year 250. The seven bishops are:
• Austremonius, First Bishop of Clermont, commemorated on November 1.
• Saturninus, First Bishop of Toulouse, commemorated on November 29. According to Saint Gregory of Tours, he suffered martyrdom by being dragged by a bull. When he saw his death approaching, he asked two of his priests to stand by him until his end, but they forsook him and fled, after which he prayed that the church of Toulouse might never have a bishop elected from its own citizens, which, Saint Gregory affirms, was fulfilled to his own day.
• Gatian, First Bishop of Tours, commemorated on December 18.
• Trophimus, First Bishop of Arles, commemorated on December 29.
• Paul, First Bishop of Narbonne, commemorated on March 22.
• Martial, First Bishop of Limoges, commemorated on June 30.
• Dionysius, First Bishop of Paris, who died a martyr, commemorated today, October 9. This is the Saint Dionysius highly venerated by Saint Genevieve of Paris.
Saint Dionysius, after being tortured many times by the heathen, was beheaded in Paris with his companions, according to tradition, in the northern section of Paris called Montmartre—Martyrs’ Mount. We have Dennis from the modern French version of his name, Denis. In the French Saint Denis, the terminal t and s are silent; the n in Saint is absorbed by nasalization into the vowel sound; and the e in Denis is elided, yielding something that sounds somewhat like Sedni: Sidney. The Random House Dictionary gives this derivation for the name Sidney.
Having related the martyric ends of Saints Dionysius and Saturninus, Saint Gregory of Tours says of the other five that they “passed their lives in great holiness, winning many people over to the church and spreading the faith of Christ among all whom they met; then they died in joyous confession of their belief. They passed away from earthly existence, some in martyrdom, others in full confession, and now they are reunited in heaven.” (The History of the Franks, tr. Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Books, 1974, page 87.)
Copyright © 2016, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, all rights reserved.
All reproduction of texts or icons on this website in any form
without prior written permission is forbidden.