ROMAN PROTOMARTYRS. - This is the designation for the first Christian victims who perished in Rome during the persecution of Nero (64 A.D.).
The accounts of their martyrdom have been handed down only by Pope Clement I (Epist. ad Cor., 6) and by Tacitus (Annales, XV, 44), but neither specifies their number, limiting themselves to generic phrases: multitudo ingens (Tacitus), πολύ πλῆθος ἐκλεκτῶν (Clement). Tacitus's sober description and Clement's fleeting mention, however, easily convey that the torments were many and cruel (v. NERONE; PERSECUZIONI).
Of these first martyrs the Roman Church has handed down neither the names nor the dies natalis; nor is there any memory of a public cult in their honor. It has been thought to refer to them the mention in the Hieronymian Martyrology, which commemorates on June 29 a throng of 979 (or 977) martyrs, who would seem to have to be associated with the apostles Peter and Paul. But Delehaye maintains that, because of the various entries in the laterculi, the anonymous group is the same one already transcribed under June 22 (unknown martyrs of Antioch, whose number is likewise uncertain). It was Baronius who inserted into the Roman Martyrology, under June 24, the eulogy of the P. r. (apostolorum discipoli et primitiae martyrum), following the text of Tacitus.
It is to the merit of the Collegium cultorum Martyrum (v.) to have promoted their cult, at first reserved to the church of S. Maria della Pietà in Camposanto Teutonico, which stands on the sacred site of their martyrdom (S. R. C., Romana, May 6, 1904), then extended, with a renewed office, to the diocese of Rome (S. R. C., decr. May 10, 1922). The liturgical commemoration (double rite of the 2nd class) is set on June 27, the vigil eve of Sts. Peter and Paul; the external solemnity, celebrated in the Vatican under the care of the Collegium, takes place on the Sunday within the octave of the feast of the two princes of the Apostles.
Bibliography6 works
Igino Cecchetti