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A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.

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May 25 · Martyrs

Sts. Maximus and…

Sts. Maximus and Venerandus

A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.

Traditional feast

May 25
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

Not verified yet

Represents

Martyrs

Early life

The book says little or nothing about early life. This is how the account begins.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 0 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Learn from the kind of life it was. A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.

Keep their day. Remember them on May 25 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.

Read more

The full original · 0 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Gallican Martyrologies. Greatly venerated in the diocese of Evreux. Authority: — The legend of these saints contained in the Evreux Breviary is altogether untrustworthy. It makes the saints leave Italy because persecution was raging, in the reign of the Emperor Valentian the Younger, and his mother Placida. They are sent to preach the faith by S. Damasus. At this time Vitalius and Sabinus were consuls, we are told. They come to Evreux, where S. Eternus is bishop. Now let us see how these points of the story agree with history. Valentinian the Younger began to reign with his mother Placida in 425. S. Damasus was created pope in 366. Here is an interval of fifty-nine years. The consuls, Vitalius and Sabinus, never were consuls together. There was a consul of the name of Vitellius, in the year following our Lord’s death, and consuls of the name of Sabinus in the reigns of Domitian and Caracalla. By these consuls they are tried and tortured for being Christians, in the reign of a Christian emperor ! and then, flying from persecution, are martyred in Gaul, after having visited S. Germanus of Auxerre (d. 448), and S. Lupus of Troyes (d. 479). The consul Sabinus, however, marches out of Italy after the runaways at the head of an army. The Seine opens to let the saints pass, but rolls back and drowns those of the pursuers who went in after them into the bed of the river. However, three days after, Sabinus overtakes them and kills them in the island formed by the confluence of the river Eure and Iton, near Acquigny. S. Eternus, who buries their bodies, occurs in the lists of the bishops of Evreux as dying in 512. The geographical blunders are as gross as the anachronisms.

Feast days

Feast: May 25

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from Sts. Maximus and…'s story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on May 25
St. Urban I., Pope

St. Urban I.

May 25 · Martyr
I

Sts. Injuriosus and…

May 25 · Feast
St. Boniface Iv., Pope

St. Boniface Iv.

May 25 · Feast
← All 1727 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.