CRISANTO and DARIA, saints, martyrs. — They seem to have been killed during the 3rd century or at the beginning of the 4th.
Their Passio (BHL, 1787) makes Daria the wife of C., but gives no indication as to the day of their martyrdom. In the Hieronymian Martyrology the two martyrs are explicitly commemorated on 12 Aug., 29 Nov., and 20 Dec. (Martyr. hieronymianum, pp. 436, 626, 655), whereas in the Mozarabic calendars they appear only on 12 and 13 Aug. (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 Nov. together with Saturninus, Maurus, and others. The date of 12 Aug. was known to Gregory of Tours, who versified the latter part of their Passio (De gloria martyrum, 37). Their Passio was edited in Acta SS. Octobris, IX, Paris 1869, pp. 437–95, on which day a group of 62 martyrs is also recorded in the Hieronymian Martyrology as buried in the cemetery of Trasone on the Via Salaria. Over their tomb, embellished by Damasus, Abbot John gathered the olives in the time of St Gregory the Great (590–604) and brought them to Queen Theodolinda. The three 7th-century itineraries (Notitia ecclesiarum, De locis, Notitia portarum: ed. R. Valentini–G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 76, 116, 144) record the tombs of the two martyrs on the Via Salaria nova in a church near that of St Saturninus, a church restored by Hadrian 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 St Peter Chrysologus, now the archiepiscopal chapel, and in the two processions of martyrs in S. Martino in caele aureo (now S. Apollinare Nuovo).