St. Benignus of Dijon

Saint Benignus of Dijon
Early Romanesque head of Benignus of Dijon. Archaeological museum of Dijon.
Bishop and martyr
Born	trad. 3rd century Smyrna
Died	trad. 3rd century Burgundy
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Major shrine	Basilica of Saint Bénigne, Dijon
Feast	November 1
Attributes	dog, key
Patronage	Dijon

Saint Benignus of Dijon (French: Saint Bénigne) was a martyr honored as the patron saint and first herald of Christianity of Dijon, Burgundy (Roman Divio). His feast falls, with All Saints, on November 1; his name stands under this date in the Martyrology of St. Jerome.

No particulars concerning the person and life of Benignus were known at Dijon. He may have been a missionary priest from Lyon, martyred at Epagny under Aurelian (ruled 270–75), near Dijon.

According to Gregory of Tours the common people reverenced his grave, but Gregory's great-grandfather, Saint Gregory, bishop of Langres (507–539/40), wished to put an end to this veneration, because he believed the grave to belong to a . He went about this in the following manner: announcing that he had learned in a nighttime vision that the burial spot (in a large necropolis outside the Roman city) was in fact the previously overlooked grave of the holy martyr Benignus, the bishop had the tomb in which the sarcophagus lay restored, and he built a basilica over it. Saint Benignus' Abbey developed at the site and joined the Cluniac order. In the early eleventh century a larger church was built by its abbot William of Volpiano (died 1031). The abbey church built by Gregory of Langres was superseded by a Romanesque basilica, which collapsed in 1272 and was replaced by the present Dijon cathedral, dedicated to Benignus, where the shrine survived an earthquake in 1280 and the French Revolution. His sarcophagus can still be seen in the crypt.