QUIRINO, saint, martyr. — Bishop of Siscia (Sissek) in Pannonia, he suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian. According to the Passio (BHL, 7035), a stone was hung around his neck and, after he had been led to the top of a bridge, he was thrown into the river. He was buried at Savaria (Stein-am-Anger), near the “Scarabatensis” gate.
When the barbarians invaded Pannonia, the Christians, fleeing, transported his body to Rome and placed it in a mausoleum behind the basilica of S. Sebastiano on the Via Appia, commonly known by the name of Platonia (v. CATACUMBAS, CIMITERO IN): an irregularly shaped building, constructed at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century, in which an incomplete inscription bearing the name of Q. was discovered in 1893; it was then falsely attributed to Pope Damasus. Q. is mentioned by s. Girolamo (Chronicon, under the year 312); Prudenzio dedicated a poem to him (Peristephanon, VII); he is commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology on 4 June and in all the itineraries of 7th-century pilgrims.
arch. crist., 5th series, 4 (1894), pp. 147-50; A. De Waal, Die Apostelgruft ad Catacumbas an der Via Appia, in Röm. Quartalschrift, 3. Supplementheft, Roma 1894, pp. 58-108; Martyr. Hieronymianum, p. 303; H. Delchaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd ed., Bruxelles 1933, p. 257 ff.; P. Stryger, Römische Märtyrergrüfte, I, Berlino 1935, pp. 151-60; R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Codice Topografico della città di Roma (Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 2), Roma 1942, p. 85, n. 2 (with earlier bibliography concerning the topography); A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, there 1942, p. 235 ff.