Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. Ado, Usuardus. Many copies of the Martyrology of S. Jerome on March 12. Authority: — A brief notice by Eusebius viii. 6, and Rufinus* additions to it. The Acts are later, not earlier than the 8th cent., and are purely fabulous.] Dorotheus and Gorgonius, as Eusebius tells us, were freedmen in the palace of Diocletian at Nicomedia, who after many tortures were strangled, and so bore away the prize of a heavenly victory. Rufinus adds that Dorotheus and Gorgonius were chamberlains to the emperor, and that when they saw Peter, another servant of the palace, tortured, they remonstrated with Diocletian, and were on that account strangled.

The Acts say that their skin was torn off, and that vinegar and salt were rubbed into their wounds; that they were then placed on iron beds over a slow fire and roasted. But the charcoal went out, and they suffered no ill-effects from the fire. Then, at last, after they had given the kiss of peace to the Christians present, they were strangled with a cord.

The relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of these martyrs were translated first to Rome, then to Gorze on the Moselle, in the diocese of Metz, in 765, and thence parts to Minden.