BACCANO (Ad Baccanas, ad Vacanas). — Name of a post station at the twenty-first milestone of the Via Cassia, where, near the ascent called clivus Parralis, Annio Fusco, father of Pescennio Nigro, the rival of Settimio Severo, owned a villa.
In Acta SS. Septambris, VI, Antwerp 1695, pp. 230–235, under 21 September there is reported the Passio of a St. Alessandro, bishop, unknown to the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, a passion devoid of historical value, which nevertheless records at B. the existence of a funerary basilica in which this Alessandro, bishop and martyr, was said to have been buried, also reproducing the inscription placed on his tomb. G. Morin proposed identifying this Alessandro with the one mentioned on 22 October by the Constantinopolitan Synaxaries (Note d'agiografie toscane in Revue bénédictine, 24 [1907], pp. 112–17); more plausible is Lanzoni’s hypothesis (pp. 529–30), according to which he was bishop of Forum Clodii. The memory of a cult of St. Alessandro at B. is confirmed
up to the 11th century by the bull of Leo IX of the year 1053, in which, among the possessions of the Vatican basilica, there is mentioned a massa Clodiana cum lacu Baccanas... et ecclesia S. Alexandri quae est in Baccanis. Also at B., in 1874, funerary remains and two square pillars of white marble, 0.75 m high, were found; three faces were smooth, while the fourth bore a vine tendril incised between two monograms. G. B. De Rossi identified them as altar bases and secured them for the Lateran Christian Museum.
BIBLI: G. B. De Rossi, B. (Baccanas) sulla via Cassia-Scopera del cimitero di S. Alessandro vescovo e martire con parte del suo antico altare, in Bull. arch. crist., 2a serie, 6 (1875), pp. 142–152; 3a serie, 6 (1888), p. 112; G. Tomassetti, La campagna romana, antica, medievale e moderna, III, Rome 1913, p. 106; H. Delchaye, Les origines du culte des Martyrs, 2e ed., Brussels 1933, p. 320. Enrico Josi