LUCIAN, SAINT, Presbyter of Antioch, is said by some writers, but without sufficient authority, to have been born at Samosata; he suffered martyrdom during the reign of Diocletian, ex. 312, and was buried at Helenopolis in Bithynia. He is frequently mentioned by ecclesiastical writers as a man of great learning and piety. Eusebius calls him a " person of unblemished character throughout his whole life" (` Hist. Eccl.,' viii. 13); and Chrysostom, on the anniversary of Lucian's martyrdom, pronounced a panegyric upon him which is still extant. Jerome informs us, in his 'Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers' (c. 77), that "Lucian was so laborious in the study of the Scriptures, that iu his own time some copies of the Scriptures were known by the came of Lucian;" and we learn from another part of his works (' Prmf. in Paralip.,' vol. 1, p. 1023), that Lucian's revision of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament was generally used by the churches from Constantinople to Antioch. Lucian also made a revision of the New Testament, which Jerome considered inferio 3 to his edition of the Septuagint.
There were extant in Jerome's time some treatises of Lucian con corning faith, and also some short epistles ; but none of these helve come down to us, with the exception of a few fragments.
There has been considerable dispute among critics respecting Luciaa's belief iu the Trinity. From the manner in which he is spoken of by most of the Trinitarian Fathers, and from no censure being passed upon his orthodoxy by Jerome and Athanasius, it has been maintained that be must have been a believer in the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity ; but on the other hand Epiphanies, in his 'Anchoret' (xxxv., voL ii., p. 40, D), speaks of the Lucianists and Arians as one sect ; and Philostorgius (who lived about 425, and wrote an account of the Arian controversy, of which considerable extracts are preserved by Photius) expressly says that Eusebiue of Nicemedia and many of the principal Arians of the 4th century were disciples of Lucian. It is probable that Lucian's opinions were not quite orthodox, since he is said by Alexander (in Thcodoret, 'Hist. Reel, i., c. 4, p.15, B) to have been excluded from the Catholio Church by three bishops in succession, for advocating the doctrines of Paul of Samosata. It is however usually supposed that be returned to the Catholic communion before his death.