CRISANTO and DARIA, saints, martyrs. — They appear to have been killed during the 3rd century or at the beginning of the 4th.
Their Passio (BHL, 1787) makes D. the wife of C., but gives no indication of the day of their martyrdom. In the Hieronymian Martyrology the two martyrs are explicitly commemorated on 12 August, 29 November, and 20 December (Martyrologium hieronymianum, pp. 436, 626, 655), whereas in the Mozarabic calendars they appear only on 12 and 13 August (cf. M. Férotin, Le liber ordinum en usage dans l'Eglise gothique et mozarabe d'Espagne du Ve au XIe siècle, Paris 1904, pp. 474–75). In the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary their feast is celebrated on 29 November together with Saturnino, Mauro, and others. The date of 12 August was known to Gregorio di Tours, who set the final part of the Passio in verse (De gloria martyrum, 37). Their Passio was published in the Acta SS. Octobris, IX, Paris 1869, pp. 437–95, the day
on which a group of 62 martyrs are commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology, buried in the cemetery of Trasone on the Via Salaria. On their tomb, embellished by Damaso, the abbot Giovanni collected the oils during the time of s. Gregorio Magno (590–604), and brought them to Queen Teodolinda. The three itineraries of the 7th century (Notitia ecclesiarum, De locis, Notitia portarum: ed. R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 76, 116, 144) mention the tombs of the two martyrs on the Via Salaria nova, in a church near that of S. Saturnino, a church restored by Adriano I (772–95; Lib. Pont., I, p. 509).
C. and D. are depicted in Ravenna in the 6th-century mosaic medallions in the chapel of S. Pier Crisologo, now the archbishop’s chapel, and in the two processions of martyrs in S. Martino, in caelo aureo (today S. Apollinare nuovo).