Gaudentius of Rimini

The record of Gaudentius of Rimini is short, and much of what survives comes through later tradition rather than contemporary documents. What is handed down is this. He was born about 280, and the tradition makes him an Ephesian — a Greek from Asia Minor who came west. He was consecrated a bishop at Rome and sent north to Ariminum, the port city on the Adriatic that Italians call Rimini, to preach there. He founded the Christian community in that city and is credited with ordaining a deacon named Marinus, the stonecutter who according to legend withdrew to Monte Titano and gave his name to the republic of San Marino. He was bishop of Rimini through the worst years of the Arian struggle, and in 359 his own city hosted one of its decisive moments. The emperor Constantius summoned the Western bishops to a council at Ariminum — over four hundred of them — while the Eastern bishops met at Seleucia. The council at Rimini began by reaffirming the Nicene faith and rejecting the imperial creed. Constantius then refused to let the bishops go home. They were kept there for months, worn down, and a delegation was finally pressured at Nike in Thrace into signing a formula that called the Son merely "like" the Father, dropping the word that had settled the matter at Nicaea. Most of the rest eventually signed too. It is the episode Jerome had in mind when he wrote that the whole world groaned and marveled to find itself Arian. Gaudentius did not go along. The tradition is that he stood with the Nicene party, and that on 14 October 360, not long after the council, he was set upon and killed — by Arian partisans, or by imperial guards, depending on which account is followed. The sources are late, and the details cannot be checked. He has been venerated as a martyr in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches ever since, and his feast is kept on 14 October. His relics are preserved at Rimini. He is the city's patron, and the cathedral holds his memory. What can be said without hedging is the setting. Rimini in 359 is where the fourth-century church learned how an empire breaks bishops: not by killing them, but by keeping them in a hall until they sign. Gaudentius is remembered as one who did not. Sources: Jerome, Dialogue against the Luciferians and Chronicle, on the Council of Ariminum; Athanasius, De synodis; the Roman Martyrology; Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 14 October.