The Four Crowned Martyrs
by VP
Posted on Saturday November 08, 2025 at 04:00AM in Saints
MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES. Four brothers, named Severus, Severian, Carpophorus, and Victorius, invested with high civil offices in the town of Rome, underwent martyrdom in the year 304, during the persecution of Dioclesian, and were interred on the boundary of the Lavican Way. A church was raised upon their remains as soon as the persecution had ceased; but the memory of the spot where their relics reposed, and even their very names had died out, and there remained but the general designation of the four crowned martyrs, by which they were known. Paul II., having had the church rebuilt, the precious relics as well as the names of the glorious martyrs, were discovered in a crypt beneath the altar, where they lay enshrined in urns of porphyry. The persecutors imagined that they could trample out the faith by shedding the blood of the faithful; but what was the result ? Those who suffered converted the very executioners by their example; they who apostatized returned subsequently to the faith; and those who betook themselves to flight spread the knowledge of the Gospel abroad.
MORAL REFLECTION. - "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," saith the Lord; "but my word shall accomplish that which I please." (Isa. lv. 8.) Source: Pictorial Half Hour with the Saints by Abbe Auguste Lecanu
- "The rage of tyrants who were masters of the world, spread the faith which they vainly endeavored by fighting against heaven to extinguish. The martyrs who died for it, sealed it with their blood, and gave a testimony to Jesus Christ, which was, of all others, the strongest and most persuasive. Other Christians who fled, became the apostles of the countries whither they went. Whence St. Austin compares them to torches, which, if you attempt to put them our by shaking them, are kindled, and flame so much the more. The martyrs, by the meekness and fervor of their lives, and their constancy in resisting evil to death, converted an infidel world, and disarmed the obstinacy of the most implacable enemies of the truth. But what judgments must await those Christians who, by the scandal of their sloth and worldly spirit, dishonor their religion, blaspheme Christ, withdraw even the faithful from the practice of the gospel, and tempt a Christian world to turn infidel?" The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal saints, Vol 11. Rev. Fr. Alban Butler 1821
