NICOMEDE, CEMETERY OF. - The martyr NICOMEDE is recalled in the Passio of the martyrs NEREO and ACHILLEO, which is devoid of historical value; his burial is indicated there as “iuxta muros Via Nomentana,” that is, immediately outside the gate of the same name, situated between the second and third milestones to the right of the present Porta Pia, built by Pius IV in 1564. The martyr’s tomb is also noted by the itineraries “de locis” and by the so-called Malmesburiense (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 115 and 144). The itinerary of Einsiedeln, from the end of the 8th century, points to St NICOMEDE on the right side of the Via Nomentana (ibid., p. 185).
Upon the martyr’s tomb, Boniface V (1619–25) erected an oratory, which was restored between 772 and 795 by Pope Adrian I (Lib. Pont., I, pp. 321 and 511). The dedication by Boniface V is also recalled in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries and in the Martyrologies (H. Quentin, Les Martyrologes historiques du moyen-âge, Paris 1908, pp. 51, 350, 429, 482, 697–98). Yet this building ad corpus has nothing to do with the urban titulus of NICOMEDE, to which belong two priests who subscribed to the Roman Synod of 499 and who are recalled in the epitaph of a “Victor presb(iter) Tituli Nicome(dis)” reused in the Middle Ages in the Gospel ambo of the basilica of St Lawrence.