Gereon
Life and witness
At Cullen, of St. Gereon, martyr, with three hundred and eighteen others, who, in the persecution of Maximian, patiently submitted their necks to the sword for the true religion.
The Lives Of The Saints: Volume 11, October, Pt. 1 · SS. GEREON AND COMP. MM.
SS. GEREON AND COMP. MM.
(about a.d. 286.)
[Ado, Usuardus, Florus, Sarum, York, and Hereford, German and Modem Roman Martyrologies. Authority : — a Passion by Helinand of Froimont in the 13th cent.]
The greatest confusion concerning these martyrs reigns in the ancient Martyrologies The names of the martyrs vary ; there are Gereon, Cassius, Florentius, Victor, Agrippinus, Marusus, and on these names changes are rung. A vague tradition, floating down the stream of time, recorded that a portion of the Theban legion, quartered at Cologne and at Xanten, on the Rhine, had suffered about the same time as Maurice and his company at Agaunum, and the Martyrologies gave such names as were remembered. But of the facts nothing was known, till gradually legend grew round them, relics were discovered and attributed to them, imaginations worked, and in the 13th century the passion of the martyrs had been elaborated sufficiently for a monk of Froimont to commit it to writing. The number of martyrs was made 318 or 319, or even 330. It is almost a pity that imagination did not stretch a little further, and then there would have been one for each day in the year. When the church of Xanten was being enlarged, in 1284, the new foundations in the old burial-ground intersected graves, and many bones were found. These were eagerly assumed to have belonged to the Theban martyrs, and, as such, receive veneration there to this day.
In some ancient copies of the Martyrology of Jerome, the passion of 316 martyrs at Cologne is stated, “ whose names God only knows.”
Biographical overview
St. Gereon may refer to: Gereon, or Saint Gereon of Köln, who may have been a soldier, martyred at Cologne by beheading, probably in the early 4th century St. Gereon's Basilica, Cologne, a Roman Catholic church in Cologne, Germany, dedicated to Saint Gereon
Martyrologium Romanum · Latin witness
Coloniae Agrippinae sancti Gereonis Martyris, cum aliis trecentis decem et octo; qui pro vera pietate, in persecutione Maximiani, gladiis patientes colla subdiderunt.