Biography
Peregrine of Auxerre
About Peregrine of Auxerre
Peregrine, called Pèlerin in French, is remembered as an early evangelizer and martyr associated with Auxerre. Local tradition identifies him as the city’s first bishop. The diocesan episcopal list explicitly notes that recent historians have not accepted that identification.
The tradition quoted by Nominis from the Diocese of Sens-Auxerre describes a missionary sent from Rome with companions: the priest Marse, the deacon Corcodome, Jovien and Jovinien. They formed a Christian community at Auxerre. Peregrine then traveled into Puisaye to preach against the local idols. The account places his martyrdom at Bouhy, near Entrains, and says that his companions continued their mission at Auxerre after his death.
His place at the head of Auxerre’s episcopal memory was preserved in the medieval Gesta of its bishops. Michel Sot dates the original compilation to about 875, when two cathedral canons brought together notices running from Peregrine to Bishop Chrétien, who had died in 872. The surviving principal manuscript was copied much later, in the twelfth century.
Later local stories also attached him to the origins of churches. A 2010 archaeological publication records a seventeenth-century claim that he had built the first Saint-Pierre church in a grotto among Roman ruins. The archaeologists explicitly state that this hypothesis is no longer accepted.
The local church continues to commemorate him. Nominis lists his feast on 16 May and preserves the diocesan account of his mission and death.
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