Alexander of Lyon

Who they were

At Lyon in France, the holy martyrs Pothinus, bishop, Blandina and forty-six companions, whose hard and repeated trials, undergone in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, are attested in the letter written by the Church of Lyon to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia. Among these, the ninety-year-old bishop Pothinus gave up his spirit shortly after he had been imprisoned; others, like him, died in prison, and others again were placed in the middle of the arena before thousands of people gathered for the spectacle: those who had been identified as Roman citizens suffered beheading, while the rest were given to the wild beasts. Last of all, Blandina, her throat cut at length with the sword after enduring longer and harsher tortures, followed all those whom she had shortly before urged on to reach the palm of martyrdom.

Among those named is Saint Alexander of Phrygia.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

The Roman Martyrology remembers him on 2 June among the forty-eight martyrs of Lyon who suffered in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.