Paul of Narbonne

Paul of Narbonne, also called Paulus of Narbonne and in later local usage Saint Paul-Serge, was a Christian missionary of the third century who is traditionally regarded as the first bishop of Narbonne in Gallia Narbonensis. Almost nothing about his birth, family, or early life can be verified from contemporary sources. The principal early witness is the sixth-century historian Gregory of Tours, who places Paul among a group of missionaries sent into Gaul in the middle of the third century, in the era of the emperors Decius, Valerian, and Gallienus, after persecution had gravely weakened existing Christian communities. Later medieval legend tried to push his career back into the apostolic age; that identification is not supported by the earliest narrative evidence.

In his History of the Franks, Gregory of Tours reports that seven bishops were ordained and sent from Rome to preach in Gaul. He names them as Gatianus of Tours, Trophimus of Arles, Paul of Narbonne, Saturninus of Toulouse, Denis of Paris, Austromoine (Stremonius) of Clermont, and Martial of Limoges. Gregory associates the sending with the period around and after the Decian persecution, and he notes that the passion of Saturninus of Toulouse already mentioned such a mission. Saturninus is independently remembered as a martyr of that generation, which gives some chronological support to the grouping, even though the precise organization of the mission cannot be reconstructed. Paul himself is not presented in the earliest accounts as a martyr. Unlike several of the companions named by Gregory, he appears to have died a natural death after founding or restoring the Christian community at Narbonne, then the capital of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis.

A later passio, of uncertain medieval date, identified Paul of Narbonne with Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul of Cyprus who, according to the Acts of the Apostles, was converted by the Apostle Paul. In that legendary recasting, the converted official supposedly travelled to Gaul, evangelized Narbonne, and was accompanied by a companion named Sergius, from whom the local church eventually took the double dedication Saint-Paul-Serge. A related tradition made Paul a Roman senator. Historians treat these identifications as unhistorical. They would place him in the first century, in contradiction to Gregory of Tours, and they belong to a wider medieval tendency to claim apostolic founders for the older Gallic sees. No reliable source documents a spouse, children, or membership in a later religious order.

Paul was buried at Narbonne. The present Basilica of Saint-Paul-Serge stands over a paleochristian necropolis and is traditionally held to mark his tomb; the dedication to Paul and Sergius reflects the later legendary pairing rather than a second historically attested founder. His cult is local and ancient. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 22 March as bishop of Narbonne. He is venerated as founder of that see and as one of the early missionaries of southern Gaul, and he is regarded as a patron of Narbonne. Beyond Gregory’s brief notice, the burial tradition, and the later legendary vita, the historical Paul of Narbonne remains an obscure third-century figure: his years of birth and death are unknown, and the details of his episcopate cannot be recovered from surviving sources.