QUINTINO, saint, martyr. - He is commemorated in the Hieronymian and Roman Martyrologies on 31 Oct. His cult was already flourishing in the 6th cent., as attested by St. Gregory of Tours (In glor. Martyr., 72), but the accounts of his martyrdom derive from a highly suspect Passio.
According to this, Q. was a Roman, son of a certain senator Zenone, and around 245, together with other missionaries, he went to Gaul to preach Christianity there and settled at Amiens. Arrested by Rizio Varo, tortured, imprisoned, but miraculously freed, he continued his preaching; then, recaptured, he was beheaded at Vermand and his body was thrown into the Somme. Around 340, a Roman woman named Eusebia, warned by a vision, sought the martyr’s body and, having found it intact, placed it in a tomb over which she built a small oratory. This was subsequently enlarged and embellished in the 5th, 7th, and 9th cent.; from this time onward the cult of Q. spread greatly in France, collections of miracles obtained at his tomb were compiled, and the city of Vermand took his name.