Orientius of Auch

Orientius first lived as a hermit in the valley of Lavedan at the foot of the Pyrenees, where his asceticism drew disciples. Elected bishop of Auch against his will around 415, he governed the Gascon city while the Visigoths settled there. In 439, during the siege of Toulouse, it was they who sent him as an envoy to the Roman general Litorius — whom tradition has him warn of his defeat, and who was indeed beaten and captured. His cult spread across the whole south-west, and the abbey of Saint-Orens de Larreule keeps his memory. To him is owed the Commonitorium, a poem of Christian exhortation. The soundest sources dispute the Spanish origin tradition gives him.