By the preaching and miracles of SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, many
were converted to the faith, and among others several servants
and courtiers of the emperor Nero, of whom St. Paul[12] makes
mention.[13] In the year 64 that tyrant first drew his sword against
the Christians, who were in a very short time become very numerous
and remarkable in Rome. A journey which he made into Greece in 67,
seems to have given a short respite to the Church in Rome. He made a
tour through the chief cities of that country, attended by a great
army of singers, pantomimes, and musicians, carrying instead of arms,
instruments of music, masks, and theatrical dresses. He was declared
conqueror at all the public diversions over Greece, particularly at
the Olympian, Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemæan games, and gained there
one thousand eight hundred various sorts of crowns. Yet Greece saw
its nobility murdered, the estates of its rich men confiscated, and
its temples plundered by this progress of Nero. He returned to Rome
only to make the streets of that great city again to stream with
blood. The apostles SS. Peter and Paul, after a long imprisonment,
were crowned with martyrdom. And soon after them their two faithful
disciples Processus and Martinian gained the same crown. Their acts
tell us that they were the keepers of the Mamertine jail during the
imprisonment of SS. Peter and Paul, by whom they were converted and
baptized. St. Gregory the Great preached his thirty-second homily on
their festival, in a church in which their bodies lay, at which, he
says, the sick recovered their health, those that were possessed by
evil spirits were freed, and those who had forsworn themselves were
tormented by the devils. Their ancient church on the Aurelian road
being fallen to decay, pope Paschal I. translated their relics to St.
Peter’s church on the Vatican hill, as Anastasius informs us. Their
names occur in the ancient Martyrologies. See Tillemont, Hist. Eccl.
t. 1, p. 179, and Hist. des Emp. Crevier, &c.