Nothing certain survives of the birth, family, or early years of Émilien — Aemilianus in the Latin of his own century — yet the Church of Valence has never forgotten that he stands first in her line of bishops. The diocese of Valence, on the Rhône in southern Gaul, appears about the middle of the fourth century, and the Gallia Christiana opens its catalogue of pastors with the name S. Aemilianus. Ulysse Chevalier, in his chronological study of the bishops of Valence published in 1867, likewise places Émilien at the head of the succession as the first bishop whose existence is historically attested. He belongs, therefore, to that generation of shepherds who received a Christianity newly free from persecution and had to plant it deeply in Roman Gaul, city by city, altar by altar.
His episcopate falls in an age of storm. The fourth century after Nicaea was riven by the Arian crisis, and the bishops of Gaul, Italy, and the East were repeatedly called to defend the true divinity of the Son against imperial pressure and clever compromise. It is exactly among such men that Émilien is found. Around the year 360 he took part, alongside Saint Eusebius of Vercelli — the great confessor bishop who had suffered exile for the Nicene faith — in the ordination of Marcellinus, first bishop of Embrun. The historian Louis Duchesne, writing in 1907, raised the question of how two bishops from such distant sees came to consecrate the bishop of Embrun; but after weighing the geography of the region, the dates at which the neighboring sees were founded, and the closeness of the name, he concluded that the testimony drawn from the Life of Saint Marcellinus is sound. Thus Émilien appears not as an isolated local figure but as a bishop in living communion with the wider Church, laying hands upon a new pastor so that the apostolic succession might reach yet another people.
In 374 the First Council of Valence was gathered in his own episcopal city. Chevalier places Émilien among those present. Duchesne noted that an Aemilianus signs the acts of that assembly without indicating his see, and he agreed that this signature is in all probability that of the bishop of Valence. So the first bishop of the city is glimpsed one last time doing what a bishop does: sitting with his brothers in council, subscribing his name to the discipline and the faith of the Church, giving the assembly of 374 a home and a host. He died after that year; the date is unknown, as is the place of his burial.
Even his immediate successor is uncertain. The name Sextus, or Sextius, was once proposed but has been set aside by scholars; the second bishop securely attested by the Gallia Christiana is Maximus I. The centuries have swallowed the details of Émilien's daily labors — the baptisms, the instruction of catechumens, the care of the poor, the preaching in a still half-pagan countryside — but they have not swallowed his name, because the Church that he fathered continued to speak it in her liturgy. His feast is kept on 10 September, especially in the diocese of Valence; Bishop Jean de Catellan, who governed the see from 1705 to 1725, transferred the commemoration to 12 September, and it was still observed on that day toward the end of the nineteenth century before returning to the tenth.
Saint Émilien teaches by his very obscurity. He left no writings, no recorded sayings, no famous miracle; he left a diocese. His holiness was poured out in the ordinary, hidden fidelity of a shepherd who taught the faith, consecrated other bishops, and stood with the Church in council when the truth about Christ was contested. The Christian people of Valence keep him as their first father in the faith, and the cathedral of Saint-Apollinaire rises where his flock first gathered.
May Saint Émilien of Valence obtain for us the grace of such quiet, unfailing fidelity, that like him we may serve Christ's Church faithfully today even when no one records our name.
