Maurus

Saint Maurus of Veroli is regarded, according to tradition, as the first bishop of the town of Veroli in Latium, in the first century. The see of Veroli is attested in the sources only from the middle of the eighth century, and the first bishop known with certainty is Martin (around 743), so the memory of Maurus is legendary.

Tradition says that the proclamation of the faith at Veroli dates from the apostolic age and comes from Mary Salome, the mother of the apostles James and John, who came to the city of the Hernici in the train of Saint Peter. Received in the house of the peasant Maurus, she brought him to the faith, and Peter baptized him and consecrated him first bishop of the community. By another tradition Salome had come to Latium with Saints Demetrius and Blaise and with Peter; she died after six months, on 3 July. Maurus placed her remains in a stone urn, on which he wrote that there lay the relics of blessed Mary, mother of the apostles James and John, and, for fear of martyrdom, he hid with the urn in the cave of Paterno, where he died three days later.

Later pagans found the urn, thought it hid a treasure and threw the bones into the square; a man who had read the inscription gathered them at night and hid them beneath a rock. In 1209 an old man named Thomas found them through a vision of Saint Peter and Mary Salome. The finding took place on 25 May, in the presence of several prelates; living blood flowed from the bones of a tibia. The head and arms were placed in shrines and kept in the cathedral, and the other bones in the altar of an oratory, later replaced by a basilica. The veneration of Maurus is local.