The First Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church

Their story

In July of the year 64, a great fire swept through Rome and burned for days, destroying much of the city. Many Romans suspected that the emperor Nero himself was to blame. To turn suspicion away from himself, Nero accused the Christians, a small community that many people distrusted. The Roman historian Tacitus, who was no friend of Christians, described what followed. A great number of Christians were arrested and put to death in cruel ways. Some were dressed in animal skins and torn apart by dogs. Others were crucified, and some were set on fire to serve as torches to light Nero's gardens at night. Even Tacitus wrote that people began to feel pity for them. Pope St. Clement of Rome, writing about thirty years later, also remembered the "great multitude" of believers who suffered at that time. We do not know the names of these martyrs. They were ordinary men, women and children of the young Church of Rome, which had been taught by Sts. Peter and Paul, who were themselves martyred in Rome in those same years. That is why the Church remembers these first martyrs on June 30, the day after the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. Their blood, as an early Christian writer said, became the seed of the Church.