Saint Quentin, also known as Quintin, Quintinus, was a Roman martyr. The son of a Roman senator called Zeno, he was a convert to Christianity. Becoming a missionary to Gaul with Saint Lucian of Beauvais and others (the martyrs Victoricus and Fuscian are said to have been Quentin’s followers), his preaching, miracles, and example won many converts in Amiens.
He was arrested in 286 by Prefect Rictius Varus during the Maximian persecution. The saint was manacled, tortured repeatedly, but refused to abjure his faith. The prefect left Amiens to go to Reims, the capital of Gallia Belgica, where he wanted Quentin judged. But, on the way, in 287, in a town named Augusta Veromanduorum (now Saint-Quentin, Aisne), Rictiovarus interrupted his journey to pass sentence: Quentin was tortured again, then beheaded and thrown by the soldiers into the marshes around the Somme. His body was recovered and buried by people he had helped convert, his tomb becoming known as a site for miracles. A blind woman named Eusebia, born of a senatorial family, came from Rome (following a divine order) and miraculously discovered the body, and a certain blind woman recovered her sight by the sacred relics. A small chapel was built nearby.
His relics were later re-discovered by Saint Eligius. When the relics were discovered, together with the great nails with which the body had been pierced, Eligius distributed these nails, the teeth, and hair in other places, and enclosed the rest of the sacred treasure in a rich shrine of his own work, which he placed behind the high altar of the church he rebuilt.
Patronage: bombardiers, chaplains, locksmiths, porters, tailors, and surgeons. Invoked against coughs, sneezes, and dropsy.
Hierax said, I was a Christian, and will be a Christian.
And Pæon stood up and said, I too am a Christian.
The Martyrdom of Justin
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