PROCESSO and MARTINIANO, saints, martyrs. — According to P. Franchi de' Cavalieri, their alleged status as jailers of the apostles Peter and Paul, indicated in the legendary Passio, would have originated from a false interpretation of the familiar scene of the arrest of St. Peter by two soldiers in Christian sarcophagi (v. illustrations, vol. IX, cols. 1415, 1478).
The Hieronymian Martyrology commemorates them on 2 July “in cimitero eorumdem, via Aurelia millario secundo.” In the seventh century, the itinerary known as the Notitia ecclesiarum indicates their burial sub terra and, instead, a Lucina in superiori; in the itinerary inserted in the Gesta regum Anglorum they are indicated as being in a basilica (R. Valentini - G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 93 and 152). In the Praedestinatus (Haer. 96: PL 53, 616), it is related that a Tertullianist priest, in the time of the Emperor Eugenius (392–94), took possession of the church of SS. P. and M. on the pretext that these Saints were Phrygians, but was obliged to return the church and flee to Carthage (cf. Cod. Theodos., XVI, 5, 40, law promulgated on 2 February 407). Gregory the Great delivered a homily there (PL 76,1232). Paschal I (817–24) transferred their relics to St. Peter’s, where he erected an oratory in their honour at the end of the southern transept and endowed it with precious gifts (Lib. Pont., ed. Duchesne, II, p. 58), which were renewed by Leo IV (ibid., II, p. 114). Gregory III (731–41) rebuilt its roof (ibid., I, p. 419). The portion of the roof above the oratory was repaired by Adrian IV (ibid., II, p. 395). The cemetery was plundered from 1672 onward; it extends beneath the Villa Pamphili, as E. Stevenson identified it in 1879 (G. B. De Rossi, Bull. arch. crist., 2nd series, 6 [1881], p. 104), and in 1889 he discovered an ancient descent leading into a cemetery region with large regular galleries. On the floor of the basilica of S. Martino ai Monti, a fragment of a poem was copied which A. Silvagni published; it was transcribed in the sixteenth century and commented upon by G. B. De Rossi, who recognized in it a mention of the martyr Martiniano, a reference to a descent, and a recollection of a presbyter Marciano.