TIBURTIUS, Saint, Martyr. - He was laid to rest on the Via Labicana in the cemetery inter duas lauros. Nothing is known about his life or the time of his martyrdom, which Damasus indicates as «tempore quo gladius secuit pia viscera matris» in the brief poem placed on his tomb, preserved by the epigraphic sylloges (A. Ferrua, Epigr. Damasiana, Vatican City 1942, p. 164 ff.).
The Passio s. Sebastiani makes him a «vir clarissimus» (BHL, 7543). His natalis is given as the «III Id. Aug.» (August 11) both in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries and in the Hieronymian Martyrology, where however the exact indication «Romae via Lavicana inter duas lauros natale Tiburti» was erroneously interpolated with the names of Valerian and Cecilia. T. is indicated as laid to rest in the above-ground area north of the mausoleum of St. Helena by the Notitia ecclesiarum (R. Valentini - G. Zucchetti, Codice topogr. della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, p. 83); he is likewise recorded among the group of martyrs of this road in the other two itineraries of the 7th century (ibid., pp. 113, 146). Over his tomb an oratory was built, restored by Pope Adrian I (Lib. Pont., I, p. 500). Pope Gregory IV (827-44) transferred his relics to the Vatican Basilica (ibid., II, p. 74).
T. is represented in a fresco in the vault of a cubiculum of the cemetery "inter duas lauros" in the act of acclaiming the divine Lamb together with the other local martyrs Gorgonius, Marcellinus and Peter (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 252).