Florentius

Who they were

San Fiorenzo is a martyr venerated at Bastia, an agricultural centre near Mondovì on the banks of the Tanaro, and belongs to the wider Piedmontese tradition of Theban legionaries who, having escaped the massacre of Saint Maurice and his companions at Agaunum, spread through the Alpine valleys preaching Christianity and were themselves later martyred at the hands of still-pagan country folk or of soldiers sent after them. With no surviving contemporary documents, his story is known chiefly through a fine cycle of frescoes painted in 1472 in the church dedicated to him at Bastia, showing his renunciation of military life, his preaching, his flogging and beheading, and wonders worked at his tomb, including the freeing of the area from man- and animal-killing reptiles.

A historian who studied the Theban martyrs has suggested that, since nothing was really known of the saint venerated at Bastia, his story was built up by borrowing elements from the lives of similarly named saints — a Spanish martyr and a hermit of a place in Umbria that happens also to be called Bastia — to give the figure a plausible shape while preserving his veneration.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

Martyr venerated at Bastia Mondovì, traditionally linked to the Theban legionaries; no feast date given by this source.