Tarcisius, Saint, Martyr

TARCISIUS, Saint, Martyr. - He suffered martyrdom probably in the second half of the 3rd century or at the beginning of the 4th century.

The oldest document that speaks of him is the poem that Pope Damasus placed on his tomb and in which he relates that T., surprised by a group of pagans while carrying the Eucharist, preferred to be killed rather than expose the Sacred Species to profanation.

His tomb was in the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way; the pilgrims of the 7th century venerated him together with Pope Zephyrinus (De locis), which was above ground (Notitia ecclesiarum), but originally T. must have been buried in a gallery of the cemetery, since Pope Damasus does not mention the proximity of the two saints. Brief accounts of his martyrdom are found in an appendix to the Passio s. Stephani papae (BHL, 7845), of which he is said to be an acolyte, but this depends on the Damasan poem. The inaccuracies of the Passio stem from the fact that the author, writing in the 6th century, when the custom prevailed in Rome of sending the fermentum to the presbyters of the various titular churches by means of acolytes (v. letter of Pope Innocent I to Decentius of Gubbio: Jaffé-Wattenbach, 311), and reading in the Damasan poem the name of Stephen, believed that the latter was the bishop of Rome and T. his acolyte. Very probably, however, T. was a deacon: Damasus in fact places him in relation to the protomartyr deacon Stephen, and it is known that to deacons during the persecutions was reserved the office of bringing the Eucharist to those absent from the liturgical assemblies and to the confessors (St. Justin, I Apol., 65; St. Cyprian, De lapsis, 13). It is not to be excluded, however, that he was also a simple faithful, since in the first centuries Christians were accustomed to bring the Eucharist home in order to communicate daily (Tertullian, Ad uxorem, 2); the Damasan comparison would then be limited to the kind of death suffered by both Stephen and T. through stoning. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on 15 August.

Agostino Amore