Gatianus of Tours

Gregory of Tours, writing three centuries after him and holding the same see, counts him among the seven bishops sent from Rome to evangelise Gaul around 250. He states what other notices pass over: Gatianus found at Tours a wholly pagan and hostile population, had to celebrate in hiding in the underground quarries and crypts, and won few conversions. Fifty years of a ministry with no visible result. He died around 301 and was buried in the city's Christian cemetery; it took his second successor, Martin, for Christianity truly to take root in Touraine. The cathedral of Tours bears his name. It is a rare kind of holiness: that of a man whose work yielded nothing in his lifetime.