Chrysanthus and Daria, Saints, Martyrs

CHRYSANTHUS 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 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), while in the Mozarabic calendars 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 natale is celebrated on 29 Nov. together with Saturninus, Maurus and others. The date of 12 Aug. was known to Gregory of Tours, who set the last 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 buried in the cemetery of Traso on the Salaria is commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology. From their tomb, adorned by Damasus, the abbot John collected the oils in the time of St. Gregory the Great (590-604) and brought them to Queen Theodelinda. 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), record the tombs of the two martyrs on the 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 at 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 caelo aureo (today S. Apollinare nuovo).

Enrico Josi