Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Martyrs

Marcellinus, a priest, and Peter, an exorcist, were put to death in Rome in the persecution of Diocletian, about 304. Pope Damasus wrote that as a boy he had heard the story from their executioner himself: they were led to a thicket outside the city, made to clear the place of their own grave with their own hands, and beheaded there, so that their burial place would stay hidden.

Christians found their bodies and buried them on the Via Labicana, where Constantine built a basilica, beside which his mother Helena was later buried. Their names are in the Roman Canon of the Mass. In 827 Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, took relics of them to Seligenstadt in Germany.