GALLICANUS, Saint and Martyr. — He is commemorated on June 23. Unknown to the ancient martyrologies, he was introduced into them by Ado. In the *Liber Pontificalis*, in the life of Pope Sylvester, mention is made of a G. who is said to have made donations to the basilica built at Ostia by Constantine in honor of SS. Peter, Paul, and John.
The anonymous author of the *Passio* of SS. John and Paul, the celebrated martyrs venerated in the basilica of the same name on the Caelian Hill, claims to know that G. was a pagan, an officer in the army under Constantine, to whom he had asked for the hand of the emperor’s daughter, Constantia. During a military expedition, she had him accompanied by her two eunuchs, John and Paul, so that they might convert him to Christianity. G. returned victorious and converted, but he refused the marriage and the consulship that Constantine offered him; he distributed all his goods to the poor and retired to Ostia, where he lived with a certain Hilarius, whose house he adapted into a hospice for pilgrims, and where G. humbly performed his service. When Julian the Apostate ascended the throne, G. was faced with the alternative of sacrificing from Ostia; he then went to Alexandria, where he suffered martyrdom. All this account is certainly based on the meager notice in the *Liber Pontificalis*, but the additions were concocted into a wretched jumble. It confused the saints of the Ostian Basilica with their namesakes on the Caelian Hill, attributed to G. what was actually done by Pontius, the patrician Pannachius, who was also involved in the story of SS. John and Paul (v.). Neither in Alexandria nor in Rome did G. enjoy a cult in antiquity; only in 1726 was a church in his honor dedicated in the Trastevere by Benedict XIII.