Gratien d'Amiens

According to long-standing tradition, Gratien was born in the third century at Rome into a senatorial family. Converted to Christianity, he left the capital to carry the Gospel into Gaul. He settled in a small village of Gallia Belgica near Ambianorum (Amiens) and took up the simple life of a shepherd, living among the rural people and quietly spreading the faith.

Under the reign of Diocletian the Roman prefect Rictiovarus was charged with hunting down Christians. Gratien was arrested, tortured, and condemned to death when he steadfastly refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods. On 23 October 303 he was beheaded at the place of his martyrdom. His body was buried on the spot where he fell.

Tradition relates that before the executioner's blow, or immediately afterward by the hands of the faithful, Gratien's shepherd's staff of hazel was fixed in the earth. A spring is said to have gushed forth; his blood stained a leaf or shrub; and overnight the staff took root, put forth branches, leaves, and fruit the color of blood. The wonder was said to recur each year on the night of 23 October, drawing pilgrims who ate the miraculous fruit with devotion. Leaves from the tree were reputed to heal the sick. The tree itself no longer stands, yet the memory of the sign remained central to local piety.

An oratory rose over his tomb. In 628, under King Dagobert I, Gratien was recognized as a saint and the place of his passion took the name Saint-Gratien. In 1113 the oratory was given to the Benedictine priory of Saint-Denis of Amiens. Early in the eleventh century Bishop Roger of Blois of Beauvais obtained the translation of the relics to the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Coulombs near Chartres; a portion of an arm remained at Montmorency, giving its name to another parish of Saint-Gratien. In 1770 the head was returned to Picardy and placed in a gilded wooden bust-reliquary in the church of Saint-Gratien (Somme). During the French Revolution the silver shrine was taken to Paris, later cast into the Seine in 1830; a fragment of the martyr's brow was restored to the church of Saint-Gratien in the Val-d'Oise in 1890. The parish church of Saint-Gratien in the Somme remains under his patronage, and a calvary marks the traditional site of his martyrdom with the words: "Here, on 23 October 303, Saint Gratien died a martyr for Christ."

May Saint Gratien obtain for us the courage to confess Christ without fear and the humility of a shepherd's heart that trusts God in every ordinary duty.