Gordian and Epimachus, Saints, Martyrs

GORDIAN AND EPIMACHUS, Saints, Martyrs. - The information concerning them is scanty and uncertain. In the oldest and most reliable sources they do not appear together, nor are they even designated as brothers, as the author of the itinerary De locis claims to know. In the codices of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, although they are commemorated on the same day, 10 May, they are clearly distinguished, and in some G. is in fact commemorated in his cemetery on the Via Latina, while E. is commemorated in that of Praetextatus on the Via Appia.

The Itineraries, however, of the 7th century remember them in the same church on the Via Latina, but in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries only the feast of G. is found. He indeed is somewhat better known. An inscription, attributed to the 7th century, relates that the priest Vincent adorned and renewed the tomb of G., and the same Passio, false and legendary, speaks only of him. According to this, in fact, G. was vicar of Julian the Apostate, charged during the persecution with judging the priest Gennarus. During the night, however, he had a secret conversation with the priest, was converted together with his wife Marina and 53 persons of his household, and was baptized. The Emperor then sent a certain Clemenzianus who shut Gennarus and G. in prison, and sent Marina to a villa for forced labor. Only G. was then condemned to beheading, and his body, after being exposed for five days to the dogs, was buried on the Via Latina about a mile outside the walls, in the crypt where E. had already been buried. The falsity of this narrative is evident, apart from everything else, because it is in open contradiction with the data of the inscription mentioned above, and certainly more reliable, in which it is said that G. was a boy of tender age. The confusion later increased because E. was identified with the namesake who suffered under Decius at Alexandria (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 41), whose relics were said to have been transferred to Rome, whereas it is established that they were transferred to Constantinople and he was venerated on 12 December. The church and the cemetery on the Via Latina, where the two Saints were buried, have not been identified with evident certainty.

Agostino Amore