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Biography

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Licinius, known in French as Saint Lézin (also Lesin or Lésin), was a Frankish nobleman and bishop of Angers who lived in the later sixth and early seventh centuries. Tradition places his origin in Anjou, in western Gaul, then part of the Merovingian kingdoms, and describes him as belonging to a family of high rank. He is said to have held the secular office of count of Anjou before entering the Church. Precise details of his parentage, the exact place and year of his birth, and the chronology of his early career are not preserved in contemporary documents. What survives comes chiefly from medieval liturgical tradition, local Angevin memory, and later hagiographical accounts rather than from sixth-century charters or narrative histories that name him in passing.

According to the traditional narrative of his life, Licinius married and was later left a widower, after which he turned from comital office to the clerical state. He received holy orders and, toward the end of the sixth century, was chosen bishop of Angers, a see already of some antiquity on the Loire and associated in earlier generations with figures such as Saint Maurilius. The date often given for his accession, around 592, is conventional rather than independently confirmed by a surviving contemporary act. As bishop he is remembered for pastoral zeal, care for the poor, and a reputation for personal austerity and holiness. Direct written evidence for the particulars of his episcopate—councils attended, churches founded, or estates granted—is scarce. His memory was kept above all in the local church of Angers and from there entered the wider Latin martyrological tradition.

Licinius died at Angers in the early seventh century. Later sources commonly assign his death to about the year 610, though the exact year is not established by a contemporary record, and some notices vary on the calendar day. He was buried at Angers. A church that came to bear his name, Saint-Lézin, was associated with his cult and relics; earlier tradition links the burial with a baptistery or church of Saint John that subsequently took the saint’s name. Devotion to him remained primarily local, centred on the diocese of Angers and the region of Anjou, with translations and attestations of relics in the medieval period. He was never Bishop of Rome, nor did he hold a patriarchal or catholicosal see of the Eastern churches.

The Roman Martyrology commemorates Saint Licinius, bishop, on 13 November, identifying him with Angers in France. He was venerated as a saint from an early period by popular cult and local episcopal recognition rather than by a formal papal canonization of the later medieval or modern type; no reliable source names a pope who canonized or beatified him. Beyond his association with Angers and Anjou, specialized patronages of places, professions, or illnesses are not firmly established in the major hagiographical reference works. The historical Licinius thus stands as a typical Merovingian aristocratic bishop whose outline—noble birth, secular office, widowhood, episcopate, and local sanctity—is clear in tradition, while almost every precise date and many biographical particulars remain beyond verification.

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