[2][3] Several miracles are attributed to Gaudentius during his life:[1] that he exorcised a man possessed by the devil and that he transformed the waters of the Misa river in Sena Gallica (Senigallia) into wine for his travelling companions.

[4] In one group of legends,[2] in 359 AD, Gaudentius participated in the Council of Ariminum,[1][9] called by Emperor Constantius II, where he condemned the Arian heresy.

Constantius had visited Rimini in 357, and commissioned the praetorian prefect, Taurus, to prepare the city for the council; the location was likely chosen because local clergy were sympathetic to Arianism.

[1][9][2] Once it seemed certain that the Arian camp would lose,[1][9] or to flee violence in the city,[3] with seventeen other bishops, Gaudentius retreated to a nearby town,[1][9] which tradition says was renamed Cattolica (lit.

[5][6] He was killed in a marshy area south of the city's Arch of Augustus, which became known as Lacus Martyrum (Lake of the Martyr); it is believed to be the etymology of Via Lagomaggio and Rimini's eponymous suburb.

[1][6] The account of Gaudentius' participation in the Council of Ariminum is considered inconsistent with earlier legends about his life, because another bishop in Rimini is attested as early as 313.

[7][8] Piada dei morti, a sweet focaccia topped with raisins, almonds, walnuts, and pine nuts,[10][11] is typically tasted as part of the festivities,[12][13] despite being proper to All Souls' Day.

[6] Le glorie riminesi nella vita, e martirio di S. Gaudentio by the Giovanni Francesco Mainardi, printed in Rimini by Simbene Simbeni in 1659, provided one of the first written hagiographic accounts of Gaudentius and his devotional tradition.

[1] Mainardi recorded than in 430,[1] an angel instructed Abortina, a blind woman from Ravenna, to go to Rimini and warn the abbot of the Church of San Gaudenzo to give a worthy burial to the remains of saints Gaudentius, Valentino, and Vittore, who lay forgotten at the bottom of a well covered by a marble slab.

[1] In 1797, the bronze sculpture in Rimini's Piazza Cavour, sculpted by Nicolas Cordier and Sebastian Sebastiani between 1611 and 1614 and dedicated to Pope Paul V, was modified to resemble Gaudentius, to save it from destruction by the Cisalpine Republic.

[1] After the Rimini earthquake on 17 May 1916, Il Resto del Carlino reported: "The bronze statue of S. Gaudenzo in Piazza Cavour has moved from its base and the crosier has broken".

[6] Alessandro Bornacci's etching Il Conciabolo in Rimino (1820) depicts Gaudentius as part of the camp defending the Nicene faith at the Council of Ariminum, being attacked by imperial guards.