Florian of Lorch

Florian had run the chancery of the governor of Noricum — some hundred clerks — and was living in retirement at Cetium, today Sankt Pölten, when Diocletian's persecution reached the province. Learning that Christians were imprisoned at Lauriacum, he went there of his own accord and presented himself to the governor Aquilinus to declare himself one of them. He was scourged, then thrown from the bridge into the Enns with a stone about his neck. His patronage of firefighters comes from a late legend in which he puts out a fire with a single bucket of water; he is invoked today from Poland to Bavaria against fire and flood.