Baring-Gould’s sources: Many copies of the Mart of Jerome on Oct. 19. Usuardus, Notker, Authority: — The Acts of S. Callixtus, which are, however, apocryphal.] UR knowledge of S. Asterius rests only on the Acts of S. Callixtus, on which, however, no reliance can be placed. According to this worthless authority, he was a priest of Rome who recovered the body of S. Callixtus from the well into which he had been flung — the martyrdom of that pope is very questionable — and buried it by night. Alexander, the prefect, arrested Asterius and flung him over the bridge into the Tiber. His body was recovered at Ostia, where he was buried. That this saint was venerated in the 4th or 5 th century appears from an old monument of that date, given [Oct. ax.

…by Muratori. “ Pascasus vixit plus minus annos xxii. fecit Tatu (sic) iiii. Idus Octobris, aetavo ante natale domni Asteri, depositus in pace.”

The body of S. Asterius, translated by Pope Sergius II., along with that of his daughter, says Anastasius the Librarian, between 844 and 847, reposes in the Church of S. Martin [St. Martin of Tours (d. 397), soldier turned bishop], Qn the Esquiline, at Rome. The Bollandists [Jesuit scholars who since the 1600s have critically studied the lives of the saints] think that this is the body of another Asterius. The relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of Asterius are now in the Church of S. Aurea at Ostia.