Biography
Tetric of Auxerre
About Tetric of Auxerre
Tetric, also known as Tétrice, was a bishop of Auxerre around the turn of the eighth century. The diocesan list places him twenty-third in the succession and assigns his episcopate to 691–706. That list provides a local chronological framework, though other accounts give different end dates.
The French bishops’ account remembers him first as an abbot of Saint-Germain and then as a bishop chosen by the people. It emphasizes his concern for worship and for the conduct of the clergy. In the received account, his correction of an archdeacon provoked hostility and eventually his murder at Escamps. The motive belongs to that narrative and cannot be independently established from the short surviving account.
His liturgical rule included the basilica of Saint-Julien’s monastery in an ordered cycle of observance. At Escamps, a stone bench inside Saint George’s church remains associated with his memory. The local tradition places his killing there while he rested in an earlier oratory. The heritage organization supporting the church describes the bench as a focus of devotion. The present Gothic building, largely of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is much later than Tetric. Its dedication is to George; the commemoration of Tetric within it should not be mistaken for that patronage.
His local Catholic feast is recorded on 18 March. The account’s death year of 709 differs from the diocesan list, so the precise year is uncertain.
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