Felix and Adauctus

The Holy Martyrs Felix and Adauctus were, according to tradition, two Christian martyrs of Rome, killed in the persecution of Diocletian in the year 303. Their feast is on 30 August.

Their acts, first published in the Martyrology of Ado, tell that Felix was a Roman priest, brother of another priest of the same name. Ordered to sacrifice to the gods, he was taken by the prefect Dracus to the temples of Serapis, Mercury and Diana, but at the saint's prayer the idols fell shattered to the ground. He was then led to death. On the way an unknown man joined him, professed himself a Christian and was killed too; the Christians gave him the name Adauctus, added. Both were beheaded. Scholars regard these Acts as a legendary embellishment of a misunderstood inscription of Pope Damasus: a prefect Dracus cannot be found among the prefects of Rome, the other Felix of the legend is Saint Felix of Nola, and the brother is imaginary.

Their veneration is very old: they are commemorated in the Sacramentary of Gregory the Great and in the ancient martyrologies. Their church in Rome, built over their graves in the catacomb of Commodilla, on the Via Ostiensis, near the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, was restored by Pope Leo III, discovered about three hundred years ago and brought to light again in 1905. In their catacomb an inscription was found, non dicere ille secrita a bboce (do not say those secrets aloud), a literary monument of the passage from Latin to Italian. It is said that Pope Leo IV, around 850, gave the relics to Irmengard, wife of Lothair I, who placed them in the abbey of canonesses at Eschau in Alsace; in 1361 they were brought to the church of Saint Stephen in Vienna. The heads are claimed by Anjou and Cologne. According to the Chronicle of Andechs, Henry, the last count of the place, received them from Pope Honorius III and brought them to Andechs abbey. The painter Carlo Innocenzo Carlone painted in 1759-1761 the Glorification of Saints Felix and Adauctus, for the cupola of the church of San Felice del Benaco, on Lake Garda.