QUIRICO and GIULITTA, saints, martyrs. - The information concerning them is rather obscure.
In the Hieronymian Martyrology they are commemorated on 16 June as martyrs of Antioch, together with another 404; in the Synaxary of Constantinople, in the Calendar of Naples, and in the Roman Martyrology, however, they are remembered on 15 July as martyrs of Tarsus in Cilicia. A homily of s. Basil (PG 31, 237-41) further recalls a martyr G. of Caesarea in Cappadocia, but without any mention of Q. Their cult, especially that of Q. alone, was very widespread in antiquity both in the East and in the West. Their Passio too was widely circulated and translated into various languages, but even then it was considered apocryphal and suspect, since it was proscribed by the so-called Gelasian Decree. The recension known today, different from the original one, is a vapid little romance crammed with the usual incredible commonplaces, with speeches and astonishing miracles, aggravated by their being attributed to a child of only three years, as Q. is said to have been.