Evasius

Evasius (; probably third century AD) is believed to have been a missionary and bishop of Asti, in north-west Italy. He was forced to flee to the great Padan forest known as the Selva Cornea, where he and numerous followers were beheaded by pagan, or alternatively by Arian enemies, in the area of what is now Casale Monferrato. He is venerated as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church and is the patron of a number of towns in Piedmont and Lombardy. His cult is liveliest at Casale, where his remains are conserved in the cathedral dedicated to him.

Life

No account of Evasius's life is regarded by scholars of hagiography as reliable. According to the Historia e vita di Sant'Evasio Vescovo e Martire by the Augustinian Fulgenzio Emiglio, published in 1708, he was born in Benevento, moved to Rome in 260 and was sent as a bishop to Asti in 265. There he suffered persecution at the hands of pagan opponents of Christianity and was forced to leave the town. The earliest account of the story, the anonymous Passio Sancti Evasii, which has been variously dated to the early eleventh-century, tenth-century, and ninth-century, sets it in the times of the Lombard king Luitprand, who reigned during the years 712–744. In the versions deriving from the latter, Evasius's opponents were Lombard adherents of Arian Christianity, rather than pagans. Still, other accounts place his life during the fourth century and have him consecrated as Asti's first bishop around 330. Carbon dating of his relics (assuming that they are genuine) favours the third-century hypothesis.

It is said that following his flight from Asti, Evasius took refuge in the forest known as Selva Cornea along with two companions Proietto and Milano,

At Pozzo Sant’Evasio (literally "Saint Evasius’s Well") in 1670 a church was erected over the miraculous spring, which had been turned into a well whose waters were reputed to cure diseases.

Feast days Evasius's feast day was entered into the Roman Martyrology as 1 December, and it is on that day that he is celebrated in Asti. He is also the patron saint of Rocchetta Palafea in the Langhe, of Pedrengo in the Province of Bergamo (who were given some relics—part of a leg, and a bone from the foot—in 1609 ), and of Bizzarone in the Province of Como.

In Casale Monferrato in the Province of Alessandria, he is the patron saint both of the diocese and of the commune. Here his feast is kept on 12 November in memory of the day on which Facino Cane returned the relics to the town.