Saint of the Day
Sts. Rufina & Secunda
Feast Day: July 10
Birth: 3rd century Rome, Roman Empire
Death: 257 Rome
Canonized: Pre-Congregation
Life: Rufina and Secunda (died 257) were Roman virgin-martyrs and Christian saints. Their feast day is celebrated on 10 July.
According to the legendary Acts, they suffered in 287 during the persecution of Emperor Valerian. Their legend states that they were daughters of a Roman senator named Asterius. Their fiancés, Armentarius and Verinus, were Christians, but renounced their faith when Valerian began his persecutions.
Escaping to Etruria, Rufina and Secunda were captured and brought before a prefect, who tortured and then beheaded them.
Their bodies were buried on the Via Aurelia and the church of Sante Rufina e Secunda was built in their honor in Rome.
In the notes attached to the publication of Pope Paul VI’s 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar, it is stated that of these two saints, whose feast was inserted into the Roman Calendar in the 12th century on the occasion of the transfer of their relics to the Lateran Basilica, nothing is really known except their names and the fact that they were buried at the ninth milestone of the Via Cornelia.
They are mentioned in the Bern manuscript of the “Martyrologium Hieronymianum,” and are recorded also in seventh century “Itineraries” as on the Via Cornelia, where Pope Damasus I erected a Basilica over their grave. The town on this spot named after St Rufina (Santa Rufina) became the See of one of the suburbicarian dioceses that was later united with Porto as Porto-Santa Rufina.
– Christi Simus Non Nostri
