A

Read the essentials →
September 3 · Abbot, Martyrs

Sts. Aigulf and…

Sts. Aigulf and Companions

Traditional feast

September 3
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

Not verified yet

Represents

Abbot
Martyrs

Early life

The book says little or nothing about early life. This is how the account begins.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 0 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Keep their day. Remember them on September 3 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.

Read more

The full original · 0 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Not in early Martyrologies; but venerated anciently in Provence. Modern Roman and Gallican Martyrologies. Authorities: — A Life by an anonymous writer, very ancient; another by Adrevald of Fleury, in 850.] S. Aigulf (in French Ayou), born of noble parents at the court of Dagobert, was brought up at Fleury, and elected Abbot of Lerins. He found the discipline somewhat re* laxed after that of Fleury, then in all the ardour of its new zeal, and he endeavoured to restore to Lerins its pristine severity of rule. A party of the monks, headed by Arcadius and Columbus, two of the brethren, resisted the innovations. A violent altercation took place, but was appeased by the gentleness of the abbot. Arcadius, however, appealed to the Bishop of Uzes, near Nice, who sent armed men to support the refractory monks. Arcadius and Columbus then rose with all their adherents and delivered the abbot, and those monks who clave to his reform, into the hands of the bishop’s soldiers, and they transported them by ship to the island of Capraja, between Corsica and the Italian coast. There they were shut up in the castle, and at length put to death. One of the monks managed to escape and blaze abroad the crime that had been committed. Then Prigonius, Abbot of Lerins, sent a boat for the relics, and they were translated with great pains to Lerins. It will be seen that the story hangs awkwardly together. Why did the soldiers of Bishop Mummolus of Uzes take the abbot and his companions such a long voyage in order to kill them ? And how was it that the succeeding abbot, who, as the party of Arcadius triumphed, would belong to those hostile to Aigulf, and guilty of his death, regarded him as a martyr? Probably Bishop Mummolus had the troublesomely austere monks carried off to Capraja to get them well out of the way, and left them there. It is not likely that he would stain his hands with their blood. But about this time, during the period that Mummolus was Bishop of Uzes, there was an incursion of Moors into Provence, and it is probable that some of their ships visited Capraja, and then, perhaps, the abbot and his companions suffered, as we know another abbot of Lerins, S. Porcharius, suffered martyrdom at their hands on a subsequent invasion. A later abbot recovered their bones, and the confused recollection of the story shaped itself into the martyrdom of the abbot by the soldiers of the bishop.

Feast days

Feast: September 3

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from Sts. Aigulf and…'s story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on September 3
P

St. Phcebe

September 3 · Feast
B

St. Basilissa

September 3 · Virgin, Martyr
St. Mansuetus

St. Mansuetus

September 3 · Bishop
← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.