LUCINA, saint, martyr. — She is unknown to the Hieronymian Martyrology; her tomb was venerated at the end of the sixth century on the Via Aurelia, in the cemetery where the martyrs Processo and Martiniano were buried, as attested by the index of the Monza Oil Vessels and, shortly thereafter, by the Notitia ecclesiarum (R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 36–37, 93).
By contrast, the L. mentioned on the Salaria vetere by the itinerary included in the Gesta Regum Anglorum is a corruption of Longinus (id., loc. cit., p. 143), itself changed to Longina in the itinerary de locis (id., loc. cit., p. 118).
This name of L., which occurs in both pagan and Christian epigraphy, became a commonplace in the Passiones 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 in order to bury the martyrs Processo and Martiniano on her estate (BHL, 6497); another L. appears again in the Gesta Urbani (BHL, 8372–75); and, according to the Liber Pontificalis, a third L. removed the remains of St. Paul from the place «in catacumbas» in order to deposit them on her estate along the Via Ostiense, and then buried Pope Cornelius on 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 the area where Pope Cornelius was buried as the crypts of L.; his tomb, however, is situated at the innermost extension 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 Saints Faustino, Simplicio, and Beatrice (BHL, 7790), of the martyr Sofia, of Saints Ciriaco, Largo, and Smaragdo (BHL, 2056), and of Pope Marcello; indeed, in the biography of that Pope, the references to a widow L. seem to have been drawn from an inscription (H. Lietzmann, op. cit. in bibl., pp. 188–89).
None of all these L. has any serious documentation; even less convincing is the recent proposal to identify one of these L. with the martyr Cecilia (G. Belvederi, Le cripte di L., in Riv. di Archeol. crist., 21 [1944], pp. 121–64).
An inscription discovered in the cemetery of St. Valentino records the grant of a tomb made by a presbyter of the title of L.; she is certainly not the apostolorum discipula mentioned on 30 June in the Martyrology of Ado and subsequently included in the Roman Martyrology.
Therefore, one must conclude with A. Ferrua that «L. non è altro che un simbolo della pietà femminile cristiana» (Iuxta coemeterium Callisti, in Rendiconti della Pont. Accad. rom. di Arch., 3rd series, 20–21 [1943–44], p. 110).