(A.D. 270.)
[Modern Roman Martyrology, but the ancient Roman Martyrology
commemorated them on Jan. 20th, so did that attributed to S.
Jerome, and many others. Authority, the authentic Acts.]
In the time of the Emperor Claudius II., there came a man from Persia,
named Maris, with his wife Martha, and his two sons, Audifax and
Habakkuk, to Rome, where they sought out the Christians who were in
prison, and ministered to them.
At this time Claudius had given orders for the suppression of
Christianity. Two hundred and sixty Christians were condemned to work in
the sand-pits on the Salarian way; but were afterwards brought into the
amphitheatre, and were killed with arrows, and their bodies thrown on a
pyre. Maris and his sons withdrew the bodies from the fire, and with the
assistance of a priest, named John, they buried many of them in the
catacomb on the Salarian way. And in the evening, passing under a house,
they heard singing, and they knew that what they heard was a Christian
canticle. Then they struck at the door, and those who were within feared
to open, thinking it was the soldiers come to take them; but the bishop,
who was with the congregation, went boldly to the door and opened it;
then they knew that these were Christians who stood without; so they
fell on their necks and kissed them.
Now it fell out that Maris and his wife and sons were in the house of
Asterius, a new convert, on a certain occasion, with Valentine the
priest, when the soldiers entered the house and took all within before
the Emperor, who remanded them to Muscianus, the prefect, to be by him
sentenced according to their deserts.
Muscianus ordered Maris and his two sons to be beaten, and then to be
placed on the little horse and tortured with iron hooks and lighted
torches, but Martha to stand by, and see her husband and children
tormented. As they remained constant, he commanded their hands to be
struck off. Then Martha stooped and dipped her finger in their blood,
and signed her brow therewith. Exasperated to the last degree, the judge
ordered Maris and the two sons to be decapitated in a sand-pit, and
Martha to be drowned in a well, all which was carried into
execution.[81] A pious matron, named Felicitas, rescued the bodies, and
buried them in her farm.