St. Denis and Companions

St. Denis was a third-century missionary bishop honored as the first bishop of Paris and, for many centuries, as a principal patron of France. According to St. Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, Denis was one of seven bishops sent from Rome to evangelize Gaul around the middle of the third century. He established the Church in the Roman town of Lutetia—modern Paris—where his preaching won converts and provoked the hostility of the pagan authorities. Denis was arrested together with two companions, traditionally identified as the priest Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius, and the three were beheaded for the faith. Their martyrdom is most often placed around the year 250, during the persecution of Decius, though some accounts date it to the persecution of Valerian a few years later. Tradition locates the execution on the hill north of the city later called Montmartre, the 'mount of martyrs.' The earliest written account of his passion dates from centuries after his death, and much of the familiar story is legendary. Best known is the medieval tale that Denis, after being beheaded, carried his own head some distance while continuing to preach—a legend reflected in centuries of Christian art, where he is depicted as a cephalophore, but not a historical record. In the Middle Ages he was also mistakenly identified with Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of St. Paul, an identification scholars have long since set aside. A shrine arose early over his tomb north of Paris, and the great abbey and basilica of Saint-Denis built there became one of the cradles of Gothic architecture and the burial place of the kings of France. St. Denis is counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers and is invoked against headaches; with his companions he is commemorated in the General Roman Calendar on October 9.