Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman and most ancient Latin Martyrologies. Authority The Acts, certainly ancient, but hardly as we have them now untouched by interpolators. Whether an adaptation to Christian romance of the history of the Mother and her Seven Sons in 2 Maccabees, c. 7, of which we have another version in the story of S. Felicitas and her Seven Sons, or whether it rests on any foundation of fact in the history of Christian persecutions, it is impossible to decide. It is curious to find, on June 27th, the same names of the sons, in ' the same order, in Martyrologies, as martyrs at Cordova,] ACCORDING to the Acts, which Ruinart calls “ sincera,” Hadrian the emperor built a magnificent palace, and dedicated it with heathen rites, but the oracles assured him that they were tormented by the prayers of the widow Symphorosa and her Seven Sons, so that they could give no hopes to Hadrian of prosperity to the new house he had built, till these eight were removed.
Then Hadrian ordered the apprehension of the widow and her sons; and when they refused to do sacrifice to his gods, that they should be taken to the temple of Hercules, 5 *. Thenew.
and there be slain. Symphorosa was beaten with stones, then hung up by the hair of her head, and finally thrown into the Tiber with a stone attached to her neck. The body was afterwards recovered by her brother Eugenius. The seven sons were attached to stakes, Crescens had 'his throat cut, Julian was pierced in the breast, Nemesius was stabbed to the -heart, Primitivus was run through the belly, Justin was transfixed with a sword through his back, Stracteus was struck in the side, and Eugenius was cleft downwards.
The place where they died was afterwards called by the heathen priests, “ Ad septem Biothauatos.” Symphorosa was the widow of Getulius the martyr, commemorated v with. Cerealis on June ioth. The Acts of those martyrs have been attributed to Julius Africanus, so also have those of S. Symphorosa and her Sons, neither on even plausible grounds.
It is very questionable whether both are not an early Christian romance. The invention and translation [the solemn moving of a saint’s relics to a new shrine] of the relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of S. Symphorosa and her Seven Sons took place in the time of Pope Stephen II., a.d. 752.
The relics are now in the church of S. Symphorosa at Tivoli; others at Pavia, Bologna, Douai, &c.
