Lucian, commemorated as a hieromartyr and bishop, was a missionary sent to preach the Gospel in Gaul who, together with his companions Maximian and Julian, was seized and beheaded near Beauvais for the confession of Christ. The three are venerated together as missionary martyrs of the early Church in Gaul. In the Orthodox calendar their feast falls on June 3, while the Western tradition keeps Lucian's principal commemoration on January 8.
By tradition Lucian came from a noble Roman family and was sent westward to evangelize the territory around Caesaromagus, the Gallo-Roman town later known as Beauvais. The traditional accounts place his death around the year 290, during the persecutions associated with the Diocletian era, though the surviving legends are inconsistent: some set Lucian as early as the first century and link his mission with that of Saint Denis (Dionysius) of Paris. He is honored as a patron of the city of Beauvais and of its diocese.
The hagiographical tradition surrounding Lucian is late and embellished, and modern critical historians, among them Louis Duchesne, have regarded the detailed narrative as unhistorical. What the tradition consistently preserves, and what the Orthodox synaxarion retains, is that Lucian was a bishop who carried the faith into Gaul and was put to death by beheading together with his two companions for refusing to renounce Christ.
