LUCINA, Saint, Martyr. - She is unknown to the Hieronymian Martyrology; her tomb was venerated at the end of the 6th century on the Via Aurelia in the cemetery where the martyrs Processus and Martinian were buried, as attested by the index of the Oils of Monza and, shortly afterwards, by the Notitia ecclesiarum (R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 36-37, 93).
On the other hand, the L. indicated on the Via Salaria vetus by the itinerary inserted in the Gesta Regum Anglorum is a corruption of Longinus (id., loc. cit., p. 143), in turn changed to Longina in the itinerary de locis (id., loc. cit., p. 118).
This name of L., which occurs both in pagan and Christian epigraphy, has become a commonplace of the Passiones of the Roman martyrs (J. P. Kirsch, Die römischen Titelkirchen, Paderborn 1918, pp. 80-84). Indeed, a most noble L. is made to live in the times of Nero in order to bury in her estate the martyrs Processus and Martinian (BHL, 6497); another L. reappears in the Gesta Urbani (BHL, 8372-75); a third L., according to the Liber Pontificalis, would have removed the remains of St. Paul from the place "in catacumbas" to deposit them in her estate on the Via Ostiensis, and then buried Pope Cornelius in her property on the Appian Way near the cemetery of Callistus (BHL, 7543).
From this passage G. B. De Rossi was led to propose identifying as crypts of L. the region where Pope Cornelius was buried, whose tomb, however, is found in the deepest extension of a hypogeum begun more than a century earlier (G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, I, Rome 1864, pp. 306-51).
Furthermore, an L. would have arranged the burial of St. Sebastian (BHL, 7543), of Sts. Faustinus, Simplicius and Beatrice (BHL, 7790), of the martyr Sophia, of Sts. Cyriacus, Largus and Smaragdus (BHL, 2056) and of Pope Marcellus: indeed, in the biography of that Pope, the indications concerning a widow L. seem to be drawn from an inscription (H. Lietzmann, op. cit. in bibl., pp. 188-89).
All these L.s have no serious documentation; even more unfortunate is the recent proposal to identify one of these L.s with the martyr Cecilia (G. Belvederi, Le cripte di L., in Riv. di Archeol. crist., 21 [1944], pp. 121-64).
An inscription found in the cemetery of St. Valentine recalls the concession of a tomb made by a priest of the title of L., who is certainly not the apostolorum discipula indicated on 30 June in the Martyrology of Ado and passed into the Roman Martyrology.
Therefore one must conclude with A. Ferrua that "L. is nothing other than a symbol of Christian feminine piety" (Iuxta coemeterium Callisti, in Rendiconti della Pont. Accad. rom. di Arch., 3rd series, 20-21 [1943-44], p. 110).
Bibliography3 works
Enrico Josi