Quirinus of Tegernsee

Saint Quirinus of Tegernsee, also called Quirinus of Rome, is venerated as a martyr of the third century. He is said to have been beheaded in the reign of the emperor Claudius Gothicus (268-270). The Western Church remembers him on 25 March, and our calendar on 6 July. He is not to be confused with Quirinus of Neuss, also sometimes called Quirinus of Rome.

According to the legendary Acts of the martyrs Maris and Martha, a Roman martyr Quirinus was buried in the catacomb of Pontian. The itineraries to the tombs of the Roman martyrs, however, do not mention him. According to a Passion of the sixth century, Quirinus, together with Maris, Martha, Audifax and Abachum, was put to death at Rome by order of Claudius Gothicus, after a time in prison in Trastevere. His body was thrown into the Tiber and was found later, the story says, by a Christian named Marius, on the bank of the Tiber Island. One legend makes him the son of the emperor Philip the Arab.

His legend was later linked with the abbey of Tegernsee in Bavaria, where his relics were brought in the eighth century. The German scholar Ulrich Schmid points out that the founders of the abbey received the relics not from Pope Zacharias (741-752) but from Pope Paul I (757-767), and that they were moved from Rome to Tegernsee in the second half of the eighth century and placed in the church of Our Saviour, the first church of Tegernsee. His cult flourished at Tegernsee, and in 1450 a larger stone church was built to house his coffin. The Roman Martyrology remembers him in the cemetery of Pontian on the Via Portuense. The miracles shown after his death are described in the Acts of Quirinus.