Sts. Marcellinus and Peter

Their story

Marcellinus was a priest and Peter an exorcist in the Church of Rome at the beginning of the fourth century, during the last and most violent persecution of the Roman era under the emperor Diocletian. They were arrested for their faith and condemned to death. We know their story because of Pope St. Damasus, who wrote verses for their tomb later in the century. As a boy, Damasus had heard the account from the very man who executed them. He said the two were led out to a dark forest so that no one would find their graves, made to clear the ground and dig their own grave, and then beheaded there. Even so, two Christian women found their bodies and buried them in a catacomb on the road leading out of Rome toward the east. When the persecutions ended, the emperor Constantine built a church over their tomb, and his mother, St. Helena, was later buried beside it. The catacomb of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter, with its beautiful early Christian paintings, can still be visited. The two martyrs are among the saints named in the First Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass, so their names are still spoken at the altar whenever it is prayed.