MILIX, saint, martyr. — Buried and PONZIO (v.) on the Via Portuense. His history is completely unknown. In the 7th century his tomb is indicated on the Via Portuense by the Itineraries; the Notitia gives M., while the De locis and the Malmesburiense give Milex (R. Valentini, G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Roma 1942, pp. 92, 107, 151).
As early as 1618, PONZIO (v.), A. Bosio saw two frescoes depicting the martyr and read part of a graffito commemorating him.
The martyr is depicted for the first time in the cubiculum where he was buried together with St. Pumenio; the late-5th-century fresco represents the two saints in tunic and pallium, separated by a jewelled cross (Wilpert, Pitture, pp. 453 and 520, pl. 255, 1). A second time, at the end of the 6th or in the 7th century, M. is depicted together with the martyrs Abdon, Sennen, and Vincenzo; he is shown praying, haloed, in a manicata tunic and paludamentum, the dress of the Byzantine court (id., loc. cit., pp. 452 and 520, pl. 258). On the plaster of the fresco, near the tomb, G. B. De Rossi read the following two graffiti: « Assurius umilis peccator p(res) b(ite)r IIII die m(ense) maio na(tale) s(an)c(ti) Mil(ix); die IIII nat(ale) s(an)c(ti) Milix m(ense) mai Assurius peccator umilis pr(e)s(biter) ». They attest that in the 7th–8th century the martyr’s feast was celebrated in Rome on 4 May. No trace of his veneration, however, is found in the martyrologies or sacramentaries. In the inscription affixed to the portico of
S. Silvestro in Capite, containing the noitia natalizorum of the saints whose bodies Paul I had transferred there on 25 April, one reads: SCI MILITI MART. His name, however, is also found among the relics deposited by Paul I himself in the atrium of the Vatican basilica, in the church of S. Maria in Turri, which he had founded (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. Chr., II, Roma 1888, p. 276). Finally, he is mentioned among the martyrs whose relics were deposited by Pasquale I in S. Prassede.
In one of the two inscriptions discovered in 1665 beneath the high altar of the church of S. Salvatore della Corte in Trastevere, one reads: « hic requiescit s. Melix martyr Christi... in capsa marmorea ».