GIOVANNI MARIA BATTISTA VIANNEY, Saint
Born at Dardilly near Lyons on 8 May 1786, died at Ars on 4 August 1859. Reared in a religious family environment, as a youth he worked as a shepherd and farm labourer. He began his studies in the period following the Revolution, under the guidance of the curé of Ecully, and, inclined towards the priesthood, entered the Seminary of Verrières, where he was noted for his deep piety. In 1813 he returned to Ecully, where he studied theology, and then entered the Seminary of Lyons, where he was ordained priest on 9 August 1815.
He served as vicar at Ecully for three years, and in 1818 became parish priest at Ars, a humble hamlet in the ancient principality of Dombes, where for 41 years he was a faithful minister of God and a great benefactor of souls. The fame of his virtues soon spread beyond the boundaries of the parish, and people flocked to him.
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SS. GIOVANNI AND PAOLO, Martyrs
A later reworking of the *Passio* added the episode of the holy martyrs Crispus, Crispinianus, and Benedicta, friends of the martyrs and, like them, put to death by Julian and buried in the same house, where Bizantius, with his son Pammachius, built a basilica.
Most probably the *Passio* was written to explain and justify the change in the name of the basilica on the Caelian Hill from *titulus Pammachii* or *Bizantis*, as it is called in documents and monuments up to the end of the 5th century, to that of *titulus SS. Ioannis et Pauli*, as it is called from the 6th century onwards. The basilica, in fact, built at the beginning of the 5th century by the senator Pammachius, was obtained by transforming an old Roman house of the 2nd or 3rd century, of which the perimeter walls and part of the painted decoration are still clearly visible. Before the transformation, however, there had been in the same house a small domestic oratory, adorned with paintings and with a kind of *confessio*, which was completely buried when the basilica itself was built.
The historical existence of the martyrs, universally believed on the authority of the *Passio* and which seemed confirmed by the discovery of the old oratory and of some pits beneath it, thought to be the original tomb of the martyrs, received a severe blow when it was clearly proved that the *Passio* itself is a plagiarism of the historically certain episode of the two officers Juventinus and Maximus, who perished in the East under Julian the Apostate. It was then thought, also because of the implausibility of a burial within the walls of the city in the 4th century, that these were not two Roman martyrs, but Eastern ones, whose relics, brought from the East, were first deposited 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 J. and P., in whose honour the basilica on the Caelian Hill was dedicated and who were later believed to be local martyrs because of the existence of their relics. Others finally thought that they were the apostle Paul and St John the Baptist, whose relics were distributed to many churches at the beginning of the 5th century; and this was due to the relations existing between J. and P. and Gallicanus, founder of the Ostian Basilica dedicated precisely to those two saints, relations clearly attested by the *Passio*, as well as by the liturgical feast, since the commemoration of J. and P. falls on 26 June, a date unknown to the *Passio*, almost midway between that of their titular saints, 24 and 29 June.
However, from the written and figurative testimonies dating back to the 5th century, one cannot but think of the real existence of the two martyrs, perhaps coming from the East.
(from Wilpert, *Mosaiken*, pl. 213, 2 c. 3) of Saints, Fresco (2nd half of the 9th century). *Maria in Via Lata*.
(Wilpert, *Mosaiken*, p. 651, pl. 243).
From the liturgical point of view, mention should be made of a *prefatio* reported in a *missal* inserted in honour of the two martyrs in the Sacramentary known as the Leonine, in which their tomb is explicitly indicated as being “in the very heart of the city”.
The two martyrs gave their name to the first monastery near the Vatican Basilica, founded by Leo the Great (440-461), mentioned several times in the *Liber Pontificalis* (I, 239, 422, 484); the church of the monastery appears in the catalogues of churches up to the time of Martin V (1417-1431). Grimaldi and Piazza believed it to be to the 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’archéologie et d’histoire*, 34 [1915], pp. 314-24). The non-Damasian eulogy of the holy martyrs J. and P., attributed by some to the Caelian, instead belongs to the aforementioned church in the Vatican (A. Ferrua, *Epigrammata Damasiana*, Vatican City 1942, pp. 229-30). Enrico Josi