Saints Nereus and Achilleus

Saints Nereus and Achilleus were Roman soldiers who abandoned military service, confessed Christ, and suffered martyrdom. They were buried in Rome, in the Catacombs of Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina. The Church commemorates them on May 12.

We know very little about their lives. The oldest and most reliable testimony is a verse inscription that Pope Saint Damasus placed on their tomb in the fourth century; fragments of it were found in the ruins of the basilica built over the tomb. Damasus writes that the two had enlisted in the army and carried out a cruel office, ready out of fear to obey the orders of a tyrant. Then, he says, a miracle of faith took place: suddenly they laid aside their fury, were converted, and left the impious camp of their commander, casting away their shields, their decorations, and their bloodstained weapons. They confessed Christ and rejoiced to bear His triumph. The inscription ends with a call to believe, through the words of Damasus, what the glory of Christ can do.

The year of their death is unknown. The Roman Missal states that they were beheaded on the Via Ardeatina, probably during the persecution under the emperor Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century. It also cites a tradition according to which they were drawn to the faith by the fortitude of Christians who were tortured and led to their deaths. Their names are already recorded under May 12 in the Hieronymian Martyrology of the fifth and sixth centuries.

Later, acts of their martyrdom were written that historians regard as a legend without historical value. They present Nereus and Achilleus as servants of Flavia Domitilla, a relative of the emperor Domitian, who went with her into exile on the island of Ponza and were then beheaded at Terracina. This story does not agree with the inscription of Damasus. It probably arose because the martyrs were buried in a cemetery that bore the name of Domitilla.

At the end of the fourth century a basilica with three naves was built over their tomb in the catacombs. On one of its columns, which survives to this day, the beheading of Achilleus was carved together with his name. In this basilica, on their feast day, Pope Saint Gregory the Great delivered one of his homilies on the Gospels. He said in it that these saints despised the world at the very time when it tempted them with peace, health, and prosperity. The ruins of the basilica were discovered in the nineteenth century by the archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi.

The names of the martyrs are also borne by an ancient church in Rome near the Baths of Caracalla, to which their relics were transferred at the end of the sixteenth century. Nereus and Achilleus were not canonized in a formal process; like other martyrs of the first centuries, they have been venerated since antiquity. In the General Roman Calendar their joint memorial is optional.