SINFOROSA (Sympherousa, Συμφέρουσα = the helper), saint, martyr. — Fr. Delehaye held that seven saints buried near one another or venerated on the same day had been transformed into brothers and attributed to St. S. as her sons, repeating the case of St. Felicita, as Cesare Baronio had already suspected (Acta SS. Iulii, III, p. 7; IV, p. 252).
Her Passio makes her the mother of seven sons (BHL, 7971), as is also read in the Passiones of Getulius (who would have been her husband) and of Zoticius (op. cit., 3524-25; 9028); the indication recurs in the Hieronymian Martyrology on 18 July, specifying their tomb at the eighth milestone of the Via Tiburtina (ed. Delehaye-Quentin, p. 383); the seven are recorded on the Via Tiburtina without mention of their mother, both on 29 May (ibid., pp. 280-81) and on 27 June, at the ninth milestone; there, however, their names are given: Crescens, Julian, Nemesius, Primitivus, Justinus, Statteus, Eugenius (op. cit., pp. 337-38). These names recur in the Itinerarium de locis (with the addition of an Irenaeus), as buried in the Basilica adjoining that ad corpus of S. Lorenzo in the Agro Verano (R. Valentini - G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Roma 1942, p. 114). The Roman Martyrology records the group on 18 July.
The ruins are still visible at the 14th kilometre of the Via Tiburtina, where the apse of the larger Basilichetta remains standing and traces of other parts of the two structures can be seen. This is what was spared from the destruction carried out by the Lombards of Astolfus. In anticipation of the devastation, Pope Stephen III (a. 752-57) had the relics of those martyrs removed and transported to Rome; Pius IV found them beneath the high altar of the diaconia of S. Angelo in Pescheria, in the Portico of Octavia. The excavation and study of the foundations and remains of the two Basilichette were carried out by E. Stevenson in 1878. Near those ruins there now stands a small church dedicated to the holy martyrs; the locality is called s. S.; in the Middle Ages it was called Sette Fratte, a correction of ad Septem Fentres.