Ursinus of Bourges
Gallo-Roman bishop and saint
Saint Ursinus of Bourges (French: Ursin) (3rd or 4th century) is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church and is considered the first bishop of Bourges.
Gregory of Tours' legendary account associated him with a Nathaniel, friend of Philip the Apostle, that he was present at the Last Supper, and read a lesson there. It also states that he was present at the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, and that Saint Peter sent him to Gaul as a missionary. Ursinus is not alone among founding bishops in France whose time of flourishing was moved back to the apostolic period, bolstering episcopal claims of primacy: as Hippolyte Delehaye writes, "To have lived amongst the Saviour's immediate following was...honorable...and accordingly old patrons of churches were identified with certain persons in the gospels or who were supposed to have had some part of Christ's life on earth."[1]
Notes
Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1955), 37.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ursinus of Bourges” is gallo-Roman bishop and saint. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ursinus, Bourges and Gallo-Roman, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2613929. VIAF identifies the subject as 80900869. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ursinus of Bourges” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.