Bishops Valerian

The designation 'Bishops Valerian' does not correspond to a single, uniquely identified historical person in the standard hagiographical and episcopal sources. Several late-antique bishops bore the Latin name Valerianus, and their lives are known in unequal measure from conciliar acts, a contemporary African history, homiletic collections, and later martyrologies. In the absence of a see, a feast date, or a catalogue identifier, these men must be distinguished rather than fused into one biography. None of them was Bishop of Rome or patriarch of an Eastern see. Birth years, birthplaces, and burial sites are not securely recorded for any of them.

Valerianus of Aquileia is the earliest of the well-attested figures. He held the metropolitan see of Aquileia, on the Adriatic frontier of Italy, in the later fourth century, succeeding Fortunatianus and remaining in office until about 388. Aquileia was then a major church of the western empire. Valerianus was a decided opponent of Arianism and took part in the Council of Aquileia in 381, assembled with the backing of Ambrose of Milan, which examined and deposed the Illyrian bishops Palladius of Ratiaria and Secundianus of Singidunum. Contemporary and near-contemporary writers, including Jerome, attest the importance of the Aquileian church in these years. No ancient source records his year or place of birth, his family, or the place of his burial. Western liturgical books later assigned him a commemoration on 27 November.

A second bishop, Valerian of Abbenza (also given as Abensa) in the North African province of Byzacena, is known chiefly from Victor of Vita's History of the Vandal Persecution. Under the Vandal king Geiseric, Catholic clergy were pressed to surrender the sacred vessels of their churches. Valerian refused. He was expelled from his city, and the king forbade anyone to receive him under a roof or even to allow him to remain on private land. Victor states that the bishop was more than eighty years old. He died of exposure on the open road; the year given in the tradition is 457. His cult entered the martyrological tradition with a feast on 15 December. His birth year is not recorded, and an age at death cannot be converted into a verified date of birth. The location of his burial is unknown.

A third figure, Valerianus of Cimiez (ancient Cemenelum, near Nice in Provence), belongs to the fifth-century Gallic episcopate. He is linked with the island monastery of Lérins and with Eucherius of Lyon. A set of homilies transmitted under his name treats ascetic and moral subjects typical of that milieu. Precise years of birth and death are not securely established; he is generally placed in the mid-fifth century. Still other bishops named Valerian appear in local lists and later calendars, including a Valerian associated with Auxerre, but the documentary basis for these names is often late and thin.

The sources do not document marriage or children for any of these bishops, nor a religious order in the later canonical sense, though Valerianus of Cimiez is associated with Lérins. Patronages of places, trades, or illnesses are not consistently attached to the name in the major hagiographical repertoires. Where cult exists, it is of the pre-congregational, local kind, without a named papal act of canonization or beatification. Until a particular see or feast is specified, a single year of birth, places of birth and death, and one feast day cannot be assigned without conjecture.