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 thereafter by the Notitia ecclesiarum (R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 36-37, 93).
Instead, the L. recorded on the Via Salaria vetus in the itinerary inserted in the Gesta Regum Anglorum is a corruption of Longinus (ibid., loc. cit., p. 143), which in turn was altered to Longina in the Itinerarium de locis (ibid., loc. cit., p. 118).
This name of L., which appears both in pagan and Christian epigraphy, became a commonplace in the Passions of the Roman martyrs (J. P. Kirsch, Die römischen Titelkirchen, Paderborn 1918, pp. 80-84). Indeed, a most noble L. is said to have lived in the time of Nero to bury in her estate the martyrs Processus and Martinian (BHL, 6497); another L. appears in the Gesta Urbani (BHL, 8372-75); a third L., according to the Liber Pontificalis, would have removed the relics of St. Paul from the place “in catacumbas” to deposit them in her estate on the Via Ostiense, and then buried Pope Cornelius in her property on the Via Appia near the cemetery of Callistus (BHL, 7543).
From this passage, G. B. De Rossi was led to propose identifying as the crypts of L. the area where Pope Cornelius was buried, though his tomb is found in the deepest part of a hypogeum begun more than a century earlier (G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, I, Rome 1864, pp. 306-51).
Moreover, an L. is said to have arranged the burial of St. Sebastian (BHL, 7543), of SS. Faustinus, Simplicius and Beatrice (BHL, 7790), of the martyr Sophia, of SS. Cyriacus, Largus and Smaragdus (BHL, 2056), and of Pope Marcellus: indeed, in the biography of this pope, the details concerning a widow L. seem to be drawn from an inscription (H. Lietzmann, op. cit. in bibliography, pp. 188-89).
All these L.s lack any serious documentation; more unfortunate is the recent proposal to identify one of them with the martyr Cecilia (G. Belli).
V. Le cripte di L., in Riv. di Archeol. crist., 21 (1944), pp. 121-64).
An inscription discovered in the cemetery of St. Valentine records the concession of a tomb made by a priest of the title of L., which is certainly not the female disciple of the Apostles commemorated on June 30 in the Martyrology of Ado and transferred into the Roman Martyrology.
Therefore, one must conclude with A. Ferrua that “L. is nothing other than a symbol of Christian feminine piety” (Inxta coemeterium Callisti, in Rendiconti della Pont. Accad. rom. di Arch., 3rd series, 20-21 [1943-44], p. 110).