Valerian (Theban Legion)

Who they were

Saint Valerian, a martyr venerated at Cumiana and elsewhere in Piedmont, belongs to the wider tradition of the Theban Legion, the Roman soldiers under Saint Maurice massacred near Agaunum (today Saint-Maurice) for refusing to persecute fellow Christians. Local tradition holds that not all of the legion died on the banks of the Rhône, and that some escaped to evangelise the still-pagan valleys of the Aosta, Piedmont and Lombardy regions, later dying for their faith there too; scholars are divided on how much of this can be trusted, and note that many local martyrs whose true identity was forgotten came to be attached to the Theban legend, sometimes simply because they were depicted in a soldier's dress.

According to the tradition, Valerian reached the territory of Cumiana and preached the Gospel there until soldiers discovered his hiding place and beheaded him; before dying he knelt in prayer, and the marks of his knees were said to remain in the stone, still shown today in a wayside chapel near Tavernette, on the slopes of Monte Piuerne, close to a larger sanctuary completed in 1787. As no exact day of his death was recorded, his feast was set at 14 April, the day of the like-named Roman martyr linked to Saint Cecilia, but because that date often falls in Lent or Holy Week, the celebration at Cumiana is kept on Easter Monday with a procession to the sanctuary; he is also venerated at Borgone di Susa, where a chapel stands by a cave he is said to have lived in.

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 Cumiana (Piedmont), traditionally a survivor of the Theban Legion massacre who evangelised the area before being beheaded; feast kept on Easter Monday.