Martial of Limoges

Gregory of Tours counts him among the seven bishops sent from Rome to evangelise Gaul around 250; he settled at Limoges and died there. All the rest is a textbook case. In the eleventh century the monk Adémar de Chabannes manufactured for the abbey of Saint-Martial a second biography making him a direct disciple of Christ, present at the Last Supper and sent by Peter: an apocryphal Life fitted out with forgeries, which won the abbey privileges and a rank of apostolicity. The council of Limoges of 1031 endorsed the claim; modern scholarship has undone it. What remains after the sorting is a third-century evangeliser and a considerable cult: the septennial ostensions of Limoges, where his relics are brought out every seven years, are attested from 994 and are still held.