On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Rome, two hundred and sixty holy martyrs
condemned for the name of Christ. Claudius II ordered them to dig
sand beyond the Porta Salaria, and then to be shot dead with arrows
by soldiers in the amphitheatre.
Also the birthday of the holy martyrs Leo,
Donatus, Abundantius, Nicephorus and nine others.
At Marseilles, the holy martyrs Hermes and Adrian.
At Heliopolis, in the persecution of Trajan, St.
Eudoxia, martyr, who, being baptised by bishop Theodotus and
fortified for the combat, was put to the sword by the command of the
governor Vincent and thus received the crown of martyrdom.
The same day, St. Antonina, martyr. For deriding
the gods of the Gentiles in the persecution of Diocletian, she was,
after various torments, shut up in a cask and drowned in a marsh near
the city of Cea.
At Kaiserswerth, the bishop St. Swithbert, who, in
the time of Pope Sergius, preached the Gospel to the inhabitants of
Friesland and Holland, and to other Germanic peoples.
At Angers, St. Albinus, bishop and confessor, a
man of most eminent virtue and piety.
At Le Mans, St. Siviard, abbot.
At Perugia, the translation of St. Herculanus,
bishop and martyr, who was beheaded by order of Totila, king of the
Goths. Forty days after his decapitation his body, as Pope St.
Gregory relates, was found as sound and as firmly joined to the head
as if it had never been touched by the sword.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs,
confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
