ST JULIAN, FIRST BISHOP OF MANS, CONFESSOR - 27 JANUARY

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 27th of January

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST JULIAN, FIRST BISHOP OF MANS, CONFESSOR

(Towards the end of the Third Century.) Saint Julian was succeeded by St Turibius. His head is shown in the cathedral of Mans, but the most of his relics in the neighbouring Benedictine abbey of nuns called St Julian's du Prè, famous for miracles; though the greater part of these relics was burnt, or scattered in the wind by the Huguenots, who plundered the shrine of St Julian in 1562. 

HE WAS MUCH HONOURED IN FRANCE

He was much honoured in France, and many churches built during the Norman succession in England, especially about the reign of Henry II who was baptised in the church of St Julian, at Mans, bear his name: one in particular at Norwich, which the people by mistake imagined to have been dedicated under the title of the venerable Juliana, a Benedictine nun at Norwich, who died in the odour of sanctity, but never was publicly invoked as a saint. St Julian of Mans had an office in the Sarum Breviary.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)