Biography
George of Vienne
About George of Vienne
George is remembered as a bishop of Vienne, the city in southeastern France. His feast is observed on November 2. The French Catholic calendar places him broadly in the seventh century while acknowledging that some writers give a later date.
The episcopal succession places him after Bobolinus and before Deodatus. Beyond that position in the list, little can securely be said about his personal history. His family, education, and the course of his daily work as bishop have not been preserved in a dependable biography.
The older records do not agree on his chronology. A medieval catalog assigns his death to 699, while Adon’s chronicle places his predecessor Bobolinus in that year. Another record associates George with Emperor Anastasius II, whose reign began in 713. The Bollandist editors set out these contradictions instead of resolving them through an invented sequence of dates.
They also reject a much fuller story that makes him a native of Toledo and identifies him with a bishop of Agde. That reconstruction depended on a spurious text. Sharing the name George does not establish that the bishops of Agde and Vienne were the same man.
The evidence for medieval devotion is clearer than the chronology of his life. A catalog from 1239 reports his burial at Saint-Pierre in Vienne. The Bollandists connect his veneration with the ceremonial elevation of six bishops’ remains there in 1251 and a papal grant concerning visitors to the church.
His continuing commemoration preserves the memory of a local bishop whose life is only sparsely recorded. It does not supply the missing details of that life.
Wondering how to weigh the stories and sources? Learn how to read a saint biography.