Gemolus

Gemolus (Gemolo) is honored as a saint and martyr by the Roman Catholic Church, which remembers him on 4 February. He lived around the year 1000 in northern Italy.

The historical information about him is very scant and sometimes contradictory. Only two sources are known: the Liber Notitiae Sanctorum Mediolani, a manuscript of the 13th century, and a passion kept in the archive of the abbey of Ganna, near Varese, copied in the 17th century from a much older lost parchment. Both tell that around the year one thousand a group of pilgrims from beyond the Alps, on the way to Rome, passed through the valley of Marchirolo, in the diocese of Milan. They were an unidentified bishop, his nephew Gemolus, a companion of the latter, Imerius, and their servants. Robbers from Uboldo, led by a chief called the Red, stole the bishop's horse and some belongings. Gemolus and Imerius pursued them and caught up near a spring. Gemolus asked for the loot to be returned in the name of the love of God and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, but the robbers refused and challenged them to accept death for that same love. Gemolus answered that he accepted, and the Red beheaded him; his companions mortally wounded Imerius, who fled and died bleeding before the church of Saint Michael at Bosto, now on the edge of Varese.

According to the narrative, Gemolus picked up his head himself, mounted his horse and reached his uncle the bishop near Monte Donego, where he died. The uncle buried him there and raised over the grave a small church dedicated to Saint Michael. In 1095 three Milanese priests settled near it, from which the Benedictine monastery grew, the abbey of San Gemolo at Ganna, consecrated in 1160. Believers went to the spring to take the red stones, held to be drops of the martyr's blood, and the waters of Saint Gemolus were carried in processions from all Lombardy to ask for rain. The relics at Ganna were recognized as authentic in 1941.

He is a local saint of the West; no Orthodox synodal canonization is known, and the story is largely legendary.