GIOVANNI and PAOLO, saints, martyrs. — The information concerning them is intricate, obscure, and controversial. They are commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology on 26 June; the ancient Sacramentaries contain several Masses in their honor; they are mentioned in the Itineraries of the 7th century, and around the middle of the 6th century their names were inserted into the Canon of the Mass.
There exists a fairly legendary Passio, composed between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6th, of which three substantially identical versions are known, though they diverge in their conclusion. In the oldest version it is narrated that G. and P. were two brothers, officers in the army of Constantine the Great and attached to the person of his daughter, Costanza. After accompanying the general Gallicano on an expedition to the East, they returned to Rome, and upon Costanza’s death received part of her possessions as a gift. When Giuliano l’Apostata ascended the throne, they were summoned by the Emperor himself to account for their faith; and since they refused to obey, they were executed and secretly buried in their own house on the Caelian by the campidoctor Terenziano. Upon the accession of the emperor Gioviano, some possessed persons revealed their burial place; Terenziano converted and wrote their Passio. In another recension, however, it is said that Gioviano commissioned the senator Bizante to search for the bodies of the martyrs and to build a basilica in their honor. Finally, in a
In all probability, the Passio was written to explain and justify the change in the designation of the basilica on the Caelian from titulus Pammachii or Bizantii, as it is called in documents and monuments down to the end of the 5th century, to titulus SS. Johannis et Pauli, as it is called from the 6th century onward. The Basilica, in fact, built at the beginning of the 5th century by the senator Pammachio, was created by transforming an old Roman house of the 2nd or 3rd century, whose perimeter walls and part of its painted decoration are still clearly visible. Before the transformation, however, the same house contained a small domestic oratory, decorated with paintings and possessing a kind of confessio, which was completely buried when the Basilica itself was built.
The historical existence of the martyrs, universally accepted on the authority of the Passio and seemingly confirmed by the discovery of the old oratory and of several underlying pits, regarded as their original tomb, suffered a severe setback when it was clearly demonstrated that the Passio itself is a plagiarism of the historically certain episode involving the two officers l'uventino and Massimino, who perished in the East under Giuliano l'Apostata. It was then thought, also because of the improbability of a burial within the city walls in the 4th century, that they were not two Roman martyrs but Eastern ones, whose relics, brought from the East, were first placed in the domestic oratory in the 4th century and then transferred to the Basilica, which took its name from them. Others, instead, thought that they were the apostles G. and P., in whose honor the basilica on the Caelian was dedicated, and who were subsequently believed to be local martyrs because of the existence of their relics. Finally, others thought that they were the apostle Paolo and s. Giovanni Battista, whose relics were distributed among many churches precisely at the beginning of the 5th century; this view was based both on the relations existing between G. and P. and Gallicano, founder of the Basilica Oatiense, which was dedicated precisely to those two Saints—relations clearly attested by the Passio—and on the liturgical feast, since the commemoration of G. and P. falls on 26 June, a date ignored by the Passio, almost midway between that of the two titular Saints, 24 and 29 June.
In any case, the written and figurative testimonies dating from the 5th century make it impossible not to accept the real existence of the two martyrs, perhaps originating in the East.
s. a.; H. Delchaye, Etude sur le Légendier romain, Bruxelles 1936, pp. 25-30; E. V. Gandia, La casa pagano-cristiana del Celio, Roma 1937; V. L. Kennedy, The Salars of the Canon of the Mass, ivi 1938, pp. 131-37; R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, ivi 1941, p. 72 ss.; A. M. Colini, Storia e topografia del Celio nell'antichità, in Atti della Pont. Accad. rom. di arch. Memorie, 7 (1941), pp. 164-95.
Agostino Amore
ARCHAEOLOGY. — The oldest images of the two martyrs are found in the long mosaic procession of saints, identified by their names, in the central nave of the basilica of S. Martino « in caelo aureo », now S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (6th century). Also in the 6th century, a church in their honor in the same city is mentioned by Fortunatus in the life of s. Martino (IV, 689).
In Rome, the two martyrs were represented in the ancient deaconry of S. Maria in Via Lata, in a fresco from the second half of the 9th century, in which they are represented with their names beside them (Wilpert, Mosaiken, pl. 218, 2–3).
In the underground area of the basilica on the Caelian dedicated to the two martyrs, they were represented in a fresco from the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century. The Redeemer stands between the archangels Michael and Gabriel; on the left, the image of s. G. is destroyed; on the right, that of s. P., identified by his name, is missing its head and feet. He is dressed in court attire studded with gems (Wilpert, Mosaiken, p. 651, pl. 243).
From the liturgical point of view, mention should be made of a « praefatio » included in a « Missa » inserted in honor of the two martyrs in the Sacramentario known as the Leonine, in which their tomb is explicitly indicated as being « in ipsis visceribus civitatis ».
The two martyrs gave their name to the first monastery near the Vatican Basilica, founded by Leone Magno (1440–51), and mentioned several times thereafter in the Liber pontificalis (I, 239, 422, 484); the monastery church appears in the catalogues of churches until the time of Martino V (1417–31). Grimaldi and Piazza believed that it was situated north of the ancient Basilica, whereas Duchesne placed it to the west (L. Duchesne, Notes sur la topographie de Rome au moyen âge, XII, Vaticana, in Mélanges d’arch. et d’histoire, 34 [1915], pp. 314–24). The non-Damasian eulogy of ss. G. and P., attributed by some to the Caelian, in fact belonged to the aforementioned church in the Vatican (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Città del Vaticano 1942, pp. 229–30). Enrico Josi