St Laurence

Laurence is one of the most beloved Roman martyrs, and his fame rests on a historical core that is small but strong. He was one of the seven deacons of the Roman church, entrusted with the care of church goods and the distribution of alms to the poor. When Valerian’s persecution fell on Rome in 258, Pope St Sixtus II was arrested and put to death, and Laurence followed him in martyrdom only a few days later. Around that certain fact Christian devotion gathered the fuller story that has lived in the imagination of the Church ever since. In that tradition Laurence grieves to see Sixtus led away, gives the goods of the Church to widows, orphans, and the poor, and then answers the prefect’s demand for Christian treasure by presenting the poor themselves as the Church’s true riches. Whatever uncertainty may remain around some details, the scene preserves something morally exact about Laurence: he was a deacon who understood that the Church’s wealth was meant for mercy.

The same is true of the famous account of the gridiron. Some scholars have doubted it, but the memory is ancient and deeply rooted in Roman devotion through witnesses such as St Ambrose and Prudentius. In either case the saint stands before us in the same way: courageous, charitable, and strangely joyful under suffering. His cult spread enormously in Rome, churches were dedicated in his honour, and his name entered the canon of the Mass. So even where history must be careful, the Church’s memory of Laurence as martyr and servant of the poor remains powerful and unmistakable.