Cyricus and Julitta
pair of Christian martyrs
Cyricus and his mother Julitta are venerated as early Christian martyrs. According to traditional stories, they were put to death at Tarsus in AD 304.
Cyricus
Some evidence exists for an otherwise unknown child-martyr named Cyricus at Antioch. It is believed that the legends about Cyricus and Julitta refer to him. There are places named after Cyricus in Europe and the Middle East, but without the name Julitta attached. Cyricus is the Saint-Cyr found in many French toponyms, as well as in several named San Quirico in Italy. The cult of these saints was strong in France after Amator, Bishop of Auxerre, brought relics back from Antioch in the 4th century. It is said that Constantine I discovered their relics originally and built a monastery near Constantinople, and a church not far off from Jerusalem. In the 6th century, the Acts of Cyricus and Julitta were rejected in a list of apocryphal documents by the Decretum Gelasianum, called as such since the list was erroneously attributed to Pope Gelasius I.
History
According to one version of their martyrdom, Julitta and her three-year-old son Cyricus had fled to Tarsus and were identified as Christians. Julitta was tortured and Cyricus, being held by the governor of Tarsus, scratched the governor's face and was killed by being thrown down some stairs.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cyricus and Julitta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.