Benedict of Cupra

Saint Benedict, martyr, was a soldier of the Roman garrison at Cupra, today Cupra Marittima, in Italy, and received the death of a martyr by beheading on 13 October 304, in the persecution of Diocletian. He is venerated as patron of the town of San Benedetto del Tronto and commemorated on 13 October.

According to tradition, Benedict, also called Benedictin, was a soldier of the Roman garrison at Cupra. He was persecuted in the time of the persecutions of Christians that followed the fourth edict of Diocletian in 304. Nothing is known of his origin. He did not deny the Christian faith and was beheaded on 13 October 304, on the bridge of a stream. He was thrown into the same watercourse, which carried him to the sea. There a peasant found him and wished to bury him on a nearby headland.

The martyr's tomb soon became a place of veneration, and around it, in time, the nucleus of the present town of San Benedetto del Tronto took shape. It seems that the site of the first tomb, a catacomb, coincides with the place where the first church of San Benedetto was built, in whose place the present one was raised in the eighteenth century, in the center of Paese Alto. Saint Benedict is venerated as a martyr. Those suffering from headaches and diseases of the head ask his protection.