NABORE AND FELICE, saints, martyrs. — They are commemorated on 12 July in the Hieronymian Martyrology, which, however, depends on the Passio, probably composed around the middle of the 5th century; according to it, N. and F. were two soldiers who, imprisoned in Milan for having deserted the army’s ranks, were later beheaded near the gate of the city of Lodi, and whose bodies were supposedly brought to Milan by a pious woman named Savina.
Babylon, and the princes Nabuchodonosor and Nabū-šum-lišir were obliged to transport bricks like ordinary laborers. He built a new temple for Ninurta in Babylon, and another in Sippar for the consort of Šamaš (the sun god). He also endowed the temples with precious gifts, delivered every year. Thus the Chaldean king succeeded in winning the sympathy of the Babylonian priests, who were so influential throughout the entire Neo-Babylonian period that they constituted a serious problem of domestic politics. N., more through diplomatic cunning than through arms, succeeded in realizing all the dreams of freedom and greatness shared by the Chaldeans and the city of Babylon, but even more their desire for vengeance, so that he no longer regarded Assyria as a member of Babylonian culture and a brother people. His fierce allies, the Medes, had a free hand to destroy the
The plausibility of these accounts, corroborated by other documents, would place the martyrdom of N. and F. at the beginning of Diocletian’s persecution, that is, at the end of the 3rd century. In the 4th century a basilica stood over their tombs, where they were held in the greatest veneration. Near this basilica, St. Ambrose found the bodies of the martyrs Gervasio and Protasio, which had for so long been unconsciously trampled by the faithful who came to venerate N. and F.