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Also known as: Eleuthere
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Bishop of Tournay and Martyr
He was born at Tournay, of Christian parents, whose family had been
converted to Christ by St. Piat, one hundred and fifty years before. The
faith had declined at Tournay ever since St. Piat's martyrdom, by reason
of its commerce with the heathen islands of Taxandria, now Zealand, and by
means of the heathen French kings, who resided some time at Tournay.
Eleutherius was chosen bishop of that city in 486; ten years after which
king Clovis was baptized at Rheims. Eleutherius converted the greatest
part of the Franks in that country to the faith, and opposed most
zealously certain heretics who denied the mystery of the Incarnation, by
whom he was wounded on the head with a sword, and died of the wound five
weeks after, on the first of July, in 532. The most ancient monuments.
relating to this saint, seem to have perished in a great fire which
consumed his church, and many other buildings at Tournay, in 1092, with
his relics. See Miraeus, and his life written in the ninth century, extant
in Bollandus, p. 187. Of the sermons ascribed to St. Eleutherius, in the
Library of the Fathers, none seem sufficiently warranted genuine, except
three on the Incarnation and Birth of Christ, and the Annunciation. See
Dom. Rivet, Hist. Litter., t. 3, p. 154, and t. 5, pp. 40, 41. Gallia
Christ. Nova, t. 3, p. 571, and Henschenius, p 180.
Born
456 at Tournai, western Belgium
Died
murdered by Arian heretics in 532 while leaving his church
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