Among the bishops of Vercelli whose names the Church has kept and venerated stands Emilian, called Emilian I to distinguish him from a later bishop of the same name. The records of the diocese place his episcopate at the beginning of the sixth century, around the years 500 to 506, and the Church has honored him with the title of saint.
To understand what it meant to sit in that chair, one must look back to its first occupant. Vercelli had been given its first bishop in Saint Eusebius, a Sardinian ordained priest at Rome and consecrated bishop on 15 December 345 by Pope Julius I. Eusebius became one of the most steadfast opponents of Arianism and a defender of the Nicene Creed; for refusing to sign the acts of the Arian-dominated council held at Milan in 355 he was exiled by the emperor Constantius II to Scythopolis in Palestine, then to Cappadocia, and then to the Egyptian Thebaid, returning only after the emperor's death in 361. Saint Ambrose of Milan praised him for having imposed upon the clergy of his diocese a common life after the manner of monks, on the model of the Eastern churches. Eusebius died at Vercelli on 1 August 371 and is venerated as patron of the city and of all Piedmont.
The bishops who followed Eusebius inherited both his cathedral and his discipline: a clergy living in common, bound to prayer, poverty, and the pure confession of the Son as consubstantial with the Father. Emilian belonged to that line. His years in office fell in a hard and unsettled age, when Italy lay under Ostrogothic rule and the Arian confession was still the faith of the rulers of the land, while the Catholic bishops of the northern cities had to hold their people together in orthodoxy, care for the poor of their towns, ordain and govern their clergy, and keep the altars and the charity of the Church alive amid political upheaval.
Of the particular acts of Emilian's episcopate the sources have preserved little more than his name and his place in the list. Yet the Church does not forget such names lightly. That he was numbered among the saints of Vercelli means that the faithful of that city, who had known him, judged his life to have been holy, his teaching sound, and his stewardship worthy of the chair of Eusebius. He was remembered as a father of his people and a guardian of their faith, and after his death, traditionally placed in 506, his memory was kept with reverence in the church he had served.
There is a particular lesson in a saint like Emilian. He founded no order, wrote no treatise that has survived, and left behind no famous saying. He simply took up the burden laid on him, served God's people faithfully to the end, and passed the unbroken faith on to the next generation. Most Christian lives are of exactly this shape, hidden and unrecorded, and God writes them all in the book of life.
May Saint Emilian of Vercelli intercede for us, and may we imitate today his hidden fidelity, doing the ordinary duty God has placed in our hands with perseverance and love, content that our names be known to him alone.
