Serenus of Sirmium

Holy Martyr Serenus (Sirenus, Cerneuf), the gardener of Sirmium, received a martyr's death around 307 (our record gives the years 250 and 302; the sources say 307). The Church commemorates him on 23 February. He is venerated by the Orthodox Church and by the Roman Catholic Church. According to some sources he suffered at the end of the third century, according to others in the fourth, in the time of the emperor Maximian.

According to a pious legend, he was born in Greece. He left his life there and decided to live in the celibacy of repentance and prayer. He went to Sirmium, in Pannonia, in the Roman Empire (today Sremska Mitrovica, in Serbia), where he bought and cultivated a garden and lived off it. He was known for his skill in gardening. He rebuked the wife of a soldier of the imperial guard who walked with her daughters through his garden, a thing contrary to the customs of the time, since they walked without a male escort. Her pride wounded, the woman wrote to her husband about the incident, and he denounced Serenus to the emperor Maximian, who gave the husband a letter for the governor of Pannonia, that he might remedy the injustice. After Serenus's testimony before the governor, the husband withdrew his accusation, and the governor found him innocent of the insult to the woman. But from Serenus's words the governor suspected that he might be a Christian and asked him about his faith. When Serenus confessed that he was a Christian and refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, the governor ordered his head cut off, on 23 February 307.

Parts of this narrative are probably fictitious; according to Butler, however, there may be some historical basis. A tradition from Clermont-⁠Ferrand, in France, says that Austremonius sent Serenus to evangelize the people of Thiers, also in Auvergne. The town of Billom, in Auvergne, claimed a portion of his relics. In France he is called "Saint Cerneuf", and the church of Saint-⁠Cerneuf in Billom is dedicated to him. Because of the confusion between Sirmium and Firmum (Fermo, in Italy), he is venerated there as a local martyr. Other gardener saints: Conon the Gardener, Phocas the Gardener and Fiacre.