St. Florian of Lorch
The Passion of St. Florian
The Acts of his martyrdom at Lauriacum, May 4, 304
Contents8 sections
On the witness of St. Florian
Editor's note
St. Florian belongs to that handful of Roman-era Western martyrs whose Acts survive in a form old enough and sober enough to be received as history rather than legend. The narrative below follows the Latin Passio as printed in the Acta Sanctorum, and is set in the year 304, under the great persecution of Diocletian, in the Roman province of Noricum (modern Lower and Upper Austria). The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him among the saints of the Undivided Church, the witnesses of the seven hundred years before the breach of 1054, and the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church keeps his feast on May 4.
Summary by PurifyWritten by Purify, not St. Florian of Lorch's words.
The sections below are a faithful retelling of the Latin Acts in plain English, with the original direct speech of St. Florian preserved as the tradition has handed it down. The text is hagiographic and synaxarial; the saint's own words are marked.
The officer of Noricum
Florian was born around the year two hundred and fifty in the town of Aelium Cetium in the Roman province of Noricum. He entered the Roman civil service, rose to a senior post, and was given charge of the official watchmen against fires in the Danube cities of the province, a station which in later centuries gave him his peculiar patronage of those who stand between people and fire.
He had been a Christian, the Acts say, from his youth. He served his post faithfully but did not conceal his faith from his fellow soldiers, and his quiet life of prayer was known to those near him long before the persecution found him out.
The forty soldiers of Lauriacum
In the year 303 the emperor Diocletian published the great edict against the Christians, and in the year following his Caesar Galerius enforced it through the western provinces. The prefect Aquilinus was sent into Noricum to compel the Christians there to sacrifice.
At Lauriacum, an old Roman city on the Enns where it meets the Danube, some forty Christian soldiers from the garrison refused to take part in the sacrifices. They were arrested, beaten, and held in prison awaiting sentence. Word of their stand reached Florian at Aelium Cetium. He left his post and travelled down to Lauriacum to stand with them.
Before the prefect
On the road outside the city Florian was met by soldiers of the prefect. They asked him where he was going, and he answered that he was going to suffer with the Christians of Lauriacum. They brought him before Aquilinus.
The prefect, who had known him in the service, was reluctant to lose him. He asked him to recall his rank, and the favour of the emperor, and to make a single small sacrifice for form's sake. Florian answered that he had served his God since he was a youth, and would not now learn another way of praying.
Aquilinus pressed him a second time, and a third. The answer did not change. The prefect ordered him stripped and scourged. The Acts say his shoulder blades were broken in the scourging, and that he continued to bless God.
The river Enns
When the scourging would not break him, the prefect ordered him drowned. A millstone was brought, tied around his neck, and he was led to the bridge over the river Enns. The Acts say that he prayed a moment, then said that the river, which had no malice and only obeyed the One who made it, would carry him to his rest. He was thrown from the bridge.
The forty soldiers of Lauriacum for whom he had come were beheaded shortly afterwards, on the order of the same prefect. The Church keeps the memory of all forty-one martyrs of Lauriacum together with the memory of Florian.
The burial
The Acts give the name of a pious Christian woman, Valeria, who lived on a small holding near the river. She came at night with a wagon and took up the body. As she returned home in the dark the oxen, the tradition says, refused to go on, and she understood that the saint wished to rest at that spot. She buried him there.
A small oratory rose over the grave. By the end of the fourth century it was a place of pilgrimage. In the eighth century the Augustinian canons established themselves on the site, and the great abbey of Sankt Florian still stands today on the spot of his burial, in Upper Austria above the town of Linz.
The Eastern reception
St. Florian's name spread eastward through Bavaria, Bohemia, Hungary, and into Poland, where in the year 1184 King Casimir II obtained a relic of the saint from Pope Lucius III and made him a co-patron of the Polish realm. From Poland his veneration entered the Orthodox East: the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church keeps his feast on May 4 in the Old Calendar reckoning, and a number of Slavic Orthodox jurisdictions of Central Europe likewise commemorate him among the Western saints of the Undivided Church.
His traditional patronage extends to all whose work is to stand between people and fire, firefighters, chimney sweeps, brewers, soap makers, and to the city of Linz and the land of Upper Austria. He is invoked against danger from flames and against drought.
A short Apolytikion in Tone 4
Editor's note
The Western Saints of the Undivided Church do not always carry a traditional Greek-form apolytikion. The short hymn below is given in the plain English of an Apolytikion of the Confessor-Martyr form, drawn from the common patrimony of pre-1929 Orthodox-Western texts.
The Church's hymnSung by the Church about St. Florian of Lorch, not written by him.
O Holy Martyr Florian, faithful officer of the lawful Emperor of all, thou didst leave thy earthly post to stand with thy brethren in chains, and didst confess the Saviour before the prefect with the unshaken word of a soldier. Receive the millstone and the river as thy throne, O blessed one, and intercede with Christ our God that He save our souls from the fire of passions, and the fire of every adversity.