Saint Eleuthère
Évêque et confesseur. (✝ 531)
Ami desaint Médard,il était comte de Tournai. Il en devint l'évêque, sacré par saint Rémi. Son apostolat s'étendit à la Flandre et à la Picardie, pour détourner les Francs de leurs coutumes païennes.
À Tournai en Belgique, vers 530, saint Eleuthère, évêque.
Martyrologe romain
Eleutherius of Tournai B (RM)
Born in Tournai, France; died July 1, 532. Eleutherius, born of parents who had been converted to the Christian faith by Saint Platon, became bishop of Tournai in 486, ten years before the baptism of Clovis at Rheims. Many Frankish pagans and heretics were converted to the faith by his preaching. Once, a young girl fell in love with him. The bishop would have nothing to do with her. In response she fell ill, and then passed into a coma. Eleutherius told her father that he could restore her to health, but would do so only if the father promised to become a Christian. Once the girl was cured, her father reneged on his vow. At this Eleutherius is said to have brought a plague on the land--an action which soon forced the recalcitrant father to repent and believe. He died from wounds inflicted by the Arian heretics of the district. Most of the early evidence of Eleutherius, including his relics, perished in a great fire which consumed his church in 1092. Of the sermons ascribed to St. Eleutherius, in the Library of the Fathers, none seem sufficiently warranted genuine, except three on the Incarnation and Birth of Christ, and the Annunciation (Benedictines, Bentley, Encyclopedia, Husenbeth). Saint Eleutherius is portrayed in art as a bishop with a monstrance. Sometimes he is shown (1) being blessed by Christ as he carries the monstrance among poor and wounded soldiers; or (2) as an angel frees him from stripes (Roeder).