Peregrinus

The Latin name Peregrinus, meaning pilgrim, sojourner, or foreigner, was borne by several distinct figures in Christian hagiography. No unique Wikidata identifier, see, century, or accompanying surname was supplied with this subject, and the historical record does not contain a single uncontested person who can be identified from the name alone. Saints, martyrs, and hermits called Peregrinus (and vernacular forms such as Pellegrino, Pèlerin, and Peregrine) appear in Gaul, Italy, the Balkans, and later medieval Italy, with feast days, cult centers, and degrees of documentation that do not coincide. Assigning one birth year, death year, city, religious order, or patronage to “Peregrinus” would therefore be an arbitrary choice among several men. The name is grammatically masculine, and every well-attested saintly bearer of it was a man; none held the papacy or an Eastern patriarchate. The following summary therefore distinguishes the principal candidates rather than inventing a single biography.

The earliest widely commemorated figure is Saint Peregrinus of Auxerre (French: Saint Pèlerin), traditionally counted as the first bishop of Auxerre in Roman Gaul. Later medieval legend presents him as a Roman of high rank sent by Pope Sixtus II in the mid-third century to evangelize the Yonne region. He is said to have been martyred, with older notices oscillating between the persecutions of the mid-third century and that of Diocletian, and to have been buried at Auxerre. The Roman Martyrology keeps his feast on 16 May. Modern critical hagiography treats the detailed acta as largely legendary: an early local cult at Auxerre is more secure than the papal-mission story or any precise chronology. No independent, verifiable year of birth survives, and even the year of death is not established on contemporary evidence.

A later and much better documented saint is Peregrine Laziosi (Italian: Pellegrino Latiosi; Latin: Peregrinus Latiosus), a Servite friar of Forlì in Romagna. Tradition places his birth at Forlì in 1260 and his death there on 1 May 1345. After a youthful episode in which, during civic factional violence, he struck the Servite prior Saint Philip Benizi and then sought forgiveness, he entered the Order of Servants of Mary, lived a life of severe penance, and was reputed to have been cured of a cancerous ulcer of the leg after a vision of the crucified Christ. He was beatified in 1609 by Pope Paul V and canonized on 27 December 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII. His feast is 1 May. In modern Catholic devotion he is invoked as patron of people suffering from cancer, from AIDS, and from other grave illnesses. As a professed religious he is not recorded as having married or had children. These dates and offices belong only to this Forlì Servite and must not be transferred to any other Peregrinus.

Other bearers of the name remain more obscure. An Irish or Scottish pilgrim-hermit is venerated as San Pellegrino delle Alpi in the Apennines, often with a feast on 1 August; the historical outline of his life is thin. Early martyrologies also list a group of martyrs including a Peregrinus at Dyrrachium (Durazzo) and various otherwise unknown Peregrini attached to a place-name and little else. A Peregrinus associated with Modena appears in local tradition. None of these figures can be given a verified birth year, and their cults, feast days, and supposed patronages differ. Because the requested subject is specified only as Peregrinus, fields that require a unique identification—exact years, cities of birth and death, burial place, religious order, a single feast day, canonizing or beatifying pontiff, and a list of patronages—cannot be filled without choosing one man over the others. The multiplicity of homonymous saints is itself the historically cautious conclusion.