EMERENZIANA, Saint, Martyr. — The martyrdom of St Emerenziana is briefly described at the beginning of the appendix added to the legendary *Passio* of St Agnes (q.v.). The Saint is presented as the foster-sister of St Agnes and a catechumen; she is said to have been stoned to death near the tomb of the martyr on the very day of her burial and buried in the same place, “in finem confini ad agelli beatissimae virginiis Agnesti” (Acta SS. Ianuari, II, Antwerp 1643, p. 353, and the brief notice at p. 458; Jubaru, p. 362).
The topographical detail of the burial is accurate, since Emerenziana, a victim of persecution in the 3rd–4th century, was interred in the above-ground area of the nearby *Geometrium Maius*, where a small basilica for pilgrims was built in the 7th 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 Hadrian I (772–95: *Lib. Pont.*, I, p. 511). In the course of the 9th century her relics were translated to the basilica of St Agnes, where they still repose beneath the high altar in the silver shrine of Paul V (1615). The site of her original tomb has not yet been identified, despite attempts to reconcile the tradition with the precise data of the itineraries mentioned above. She is probably depicted in a painting on the front wall of an arcosolium in the *Geometrium Maius*.
Two dates mark her anniversary: 23 January, proposed by the *Passio* and recorded in the “pleniores” additions to the Hieronymian Martyrology, in Bede’s Martyrology, and in the 8th-century Gelasian Sacramentary (cf. P. Puniét, *Le Sacramentaire romain de Gellone*, 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 at the Ponte Rotto and by the Hieronymian Martyrology.