St. Lawrence

Lawrence is one of the most beloved of the Roman martyrs, and the tradition around his death is vivid enough that much of it deserves preservation even where caution about legend is warranted. He was one of the seven deacons of Rome and, by common account, the archdeacon — the one who administered the material goods of the Roman church and had direct charge of its poor. When Pope Sixtus II was arrested and beheaded during the Valerian persecution in August of 258, Lawrence reportedly followed him weeping to the place of execution and was told by Sixtus that he would follow him in three days. That detail, whether precisely historical or not, is among the most repeated in the early passion literature, and its antiquity earns it respect.

Lawrence was ordered by the prefect to hand over the treasure of the Church within three days. He gathered the poor, the sick, the crippled, and the outcasts, and presented them to the prefect as the treasure of the Church. The prefect ordered him roasted on a gridiron, and the famous remark attributed to Lawrence — asking to be turned over, as he was done on one side — appears even in the writings of Ambrose, which gives it some claim to early currency. Elements of the passion account have accumulated over time and are not all equally reliable. But the whole rests on what is not legendary at all: the antiquity of the devotion, the martyrdom under Valerian, the basilica raised over his grave on the Via Tiburtina which is among the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome, and the undisputed fact that Lawrence's name was commemorated in the ancient canon of the Roman Mass.