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Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

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September 14 · Martyr

St. Crescentius

St. Crescentius

Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

Traditional feast

September 14
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

Not verified yet

Represents

Martyr

Early life

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

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 123 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

Turpius said: “ Apollo is a god, confess that.” “ No,” said Crescentius; “he is no god, he is a demon.” Then the proconsul ordered both to be beaten with rods, and he said, “ Blaspheme not and ordered them to be kept in separate prisons. And next morning Crescentius was sent chained to Rome, and was brought before Diocletian and sentenced to lose his head. The boy was then executed, and buried in the catacomb on the Salarian wray.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Learn from the kind of life it was. Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

Keep their day. Remember them on September 14 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.

Read more

The full original · 123 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. Authority: — The untrustworthy Acts in the Lessons of the Church of Perugia for this day.] Euthymius, a Roman citizen, with his wife and only son, Crescentius, having been baptized secretly at Rome, fled the capital on the breaking out of persecution under Diocletian, and took refuge at Perugia. There Euthymius died. Shortly after, Crescentius and his mother were arrested and brought before the proconsul Turpius; and Turpius said to the widow: “So you, and your son, and husband, who is dead, have followed Christ !” She answered: “It is true, we have all three been baptized.”

Turpius said: “ Apollo is a god, confess that.” “ No,” said Crescentius; “he is no god, he is a demon.” Then the proconsul ordered both to be beaten with rods, and he said, “ Blaspheme not and ordered them to be kept in separate prisons.

And next morning Crescentius was sent chained to Rome, and was brought before Diocletian [Roman emperor 284–305, who began the ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians in 303] and sentenced to lose his head. The boy was then executed, and buried in the catacomb on the Salarian wray. The body was given by Pope Stephen IX. to the Bishop of Siena in 1058. Another body of the same martyr was extracted from the same cemetery by Pope Urban VIII., in 1606, and given to the Jesuit Church at Tortosa in Spain.

Feast days

Feast: September 14

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

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

Also on September 14
St. Cyprian

St. Cyprian

September 14 · Bishop, Martyr
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Sts. Crescentianus and…

September 14 · Martyrs
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St. Maternus of Treves

September 14 · Bishop
← All 1726 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.