Abundius

Saint Abundius and Saint Irenaeus were two Roman martyrs, put to death around 258, under the emperor Valerian, venerated as saints by both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church. Abundius is commemorated on 23 August.

According to tradition, Irenaeus was the keeper of the drains into which Saint Concordia, the foster mother of Hippolytus, the jailer of Saint Laurence, was thrown after her martyrdom in 258. Together with Abundius, Irenaeus took up the body of Concordia. As punishment they too were thrown into the public sewer and drowned. The priest Justin (died 269?) took their bodies out of the sewer.

Alongside Laurence, Abundius and Irenaeus were venerated in the catacomb of Cyriaca (today the catacomb of Saint Laurence), on the land of a rich widow, Cyriaca. According to old pilgrim accounts, in the seventh century they were venerated at San Lorenzo fuori le mura, and the present Roman Martyrology links their names to the catacomb of Saint Laurence on the Via Tiburtina. The story belongs to the cycle of legends about Laurence and Hippolytus. In the eleventh century relics of Abundius and Irenaeus were kept in the monastery of Limburg an der Haardt (now in ruins), at Bad Dürkheim; Gottschalk of Aachen, chaplain of Henry IV, composed for the brothers of the monastery an office in their honor. The head of Abundius was lost in 1704, in the War of the Spanish Succession.