EMERENZIANA, saint, martyr. — The martyrdom of E. is briefly described at the beginning of the appendix added to the legendary Passio of s. Agnese (v.). The Saint, presented as the foster-sister of s. Agnese and a catechumen, is said to have been stoned near the martyr’s tomb on the very day of her funeral and buried « in confinio agelli beatissime virginis Agnetis » (Acta SS. Ianuarii, II, Antwerp 1643, p. 353, and the brief notice on p. 458; Jubaru, p. 362).
The topographical detail concerning the burial is accurate, since E., a victim of a persecution of the third or fourth century, was interred in the above-ground section of the nearby Coemeterium Maius, where there stood a small basilica visited by pilgrims of the seventh century
(cf. the Notitia ecclesiarum, the De locis sanctorum Martyrum, and the Notitia portarum: ed. R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Il codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 78, 115, 145), restored by Adrian I (772–95: Lib. Pont., I, p. 511). During the ninth century E.’s remains were transferred to the basilica of S. Agnese, where they still rest beneath the high altar, in the artistic silver reliquary of Paul V (1615). The site of her original tomb has not yet been identified, despite Armellini’s attempt to recognize it in an underground crypt, which contradicts the precise information supplied by the Itineraries mentioned above. E. is probably depicted in a painting adorning the front wall of an arcosolium in the Coemeterium Maius. Two dates commemorate her anniversary: 23 January, suggested by the Passio and recorded in the additions to the «pleniores» codices of the Hieronymian Martyrology, in the Martyrology of Bede, and in the eighth-century Gelasian Sacramentary (cf. P. Puniet, Le Sacramentaire romain de Gallone, Rome [1938], pp. 20–21), whence it passed into the Missal and the Roman Martyrology; and 16 September, attested by the inscription discovered by De Rossi near the Ponte Rotto and by the Hieronymian Martyrology.