ERMETE, saint, Roman martyr. — The legendary passio of St. E., inserted into that of Pope Alexander (109–16), makes him a Christian prefect of Rome, brother of a Theodora, martyred on 28 August under Hadrian and buried on the old Via Salaria (BHL 3853). But no E. was prefect of the city, Bassilla (v.) display such remote antiquity.
In 1932, two fragments in Philocalian lettering were identified in the upper structure of the said cemetery. They belonged to a Damasian poem transmitted to us only by the fourth Laureshamensis collection, which G. B. De Rossi published as coming from an uncertain location and thought might belong to Hippolytus of the Greek martyrs, while noting that Terribilini had suspected that it referred to E. of the old Via Salaria (Interiptiones Christianæ urbis Romae, II, Rome 1888, p. 108, n. 57). The discovery of 1932, to which a third small fragment was added, confirmed Terribilini’s hypothesis. Damasus follows an oral tradition: «Iam dudum quod fama refert»; that is, it concerns an event of the third century, as in the cases of St. Agnes and St. Hippolytus. The martyr, whose name betrays a non-Roman origin, came to Rome from Greece: «Te Graecia misit» but «sanguine mutasti patriam, civemque fratrem fecit amor legis» (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Vatican City 1942, pp. 195–96).
The veneration of St. E. is attested on 28 August by the Deponitio martyrum: «V Kal (endas) sept (embres) Hermetis in Bassillae, Salaria vetere»; by Damasus, who, in addition to the poem mentioned above, adorned his tomb; and by A. Bosio (Roma sotterranea, Rome 1632, p. 560), who recognized in the cemetery area a fragment of a marble epistyle bearing on one side, in Philocalian lettering: Herme; and on the other: iahavens (A. Ferrua, op. cit., pp. 196–97). On the same date the martyr is indicated in the Hieronymian Martyrology and in the Sacramentaries. Pope Pelagius II built, or rather enlarged, the basilica erected over his tomb (579–90; Lib. Pont., I, p. 309); under St. Gregory (590–604), the oil from the lamps burning over his tomb was brought to Queen Theodelinda (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, p. 43). The pilgrims’ itineraries point out its basilica, with its tomb «longe sub terra» (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, op. cit., pp. 75, 117, 143). Pope Hadrian (772–93) restored its basilica (Lib. Pont., I, p. 309). In the meantime, a Benedictine monastery had been attached to it, and a monk of St. E. was buried in S. Saba.
After the basilica had fallen into ruin, an oratory was built, whose small apse was decorated with a painting that also contained the image of the martyr, represented in rich vestments (E. Josi, Scoperta d'un altare e di pitture nella basilica di S. Ermete, in Riv. di arch. crist., 17 [1940], p. 206, fig. 8). The monastery and the oratory remained until approximately 1200, since the catalogue of Turin states that «ecclesia sancti Hermetia extra muros non habet servitorem» (C. Huelsen, Le chiese di Roma nel medioevo, Florence 1927, p. 28, n. 34). Outside Rome, a shrine of St. E. is mentioned at Anzio in the biography of Pope Boniface I (418–22) (Lib. Pont., I, p. 27). In 598, St. Gregory sent to Chrysanthus, bishop of Spoleto, «brandes» (v.) that had been at the tombs of St. E. and St. Hyacinthus, for the church of S. Maria in Rieti (Gregori I papae registrium epistolorum, IX, 15, ed. P. Ewald and L. M. Hartmann, in MGH, Epistolae, II, Berlin 1899, p. 76); the same pope, in 590, gave his consent to the erection in Naples of a church in honor of the martyrs E., Sebastian, Chrysacus, and Pancratius (loc. cit., p. 164). From the same pope we also learn of the existence at that time of a monastery of S. E. in Sicily (Registrium, VI, 39 and 47, ed. cit., I, pp. 415 and 422) and another in Sardinia (Registrium, XIV, 2, ed. cit., II, p. 421). It is not known whether the St. E. whom the Hieronymian Martyrology indicates on 1 March as commemorated at Marseille is the Roman martyr, the one from Heraclea, or the other from Bologna in Moesia, whom the same Martyrology records on 31 December, 1 January, and 4 January. — Vedi tav. XXXIX.