The Four Crowned Martyrs or Four Holy Crowned Ones (Sancti Quatuor Coronati) were nine individuals who are venerated as martyrs and saints of Early Christianity The nine saints are divided into two groups:

1. Severus (or Secundius), Severian(us), Carpophorus (Carpoforus), Victorinus (Victorius, Vittorinus)
2. Claudius, Castorius, Symphorian (Simpronian), Nicostratus, and Simplicius

According to the Golden Legend, the names of the members of the first group were not known at the time of their death “but were learned through the Lord’s revelation after many years had passed.” They were called the “Four Crowned Martyrs” because their names were unknown (“crown” referring to the crown of martyrdom).

The rather confusing story of the four crowned martyrs was well known in Renaissance Florence, principally as told in the thirteenth-century Golden Legend by Jacopo da Voragine. It appears that the original four martyrs were beaten to death by order of Emperor Diocletian (r. AD 284–305). Their story became conflated with that of a group of five stonecarvers, also martyred by Diocletian for refusing to carve the image of a pagan god. Due to their profession as sculptors, the five early Christian martyrs were an obvious choice for the guild of stonemasons, but their number seems often to have been understood to be four, as in this case.

Problems arise with determining the historicity of these martyrs because one group contains five names instead of four. Alban Butler believed that the four names of group one, which the Roman Martyrology and the Breviary say were revealed as those of the Four Crowned Martyrs, were borrowed from the martyrology of the Diocese of Albano Laziale, which kept their feast on August 8, not November 8. These four “borrowed” martyrs were not buried in Rome, but in the catacomb of Albano; their feast was celebrated on August 7 or August 8, the date under which is cited in the Roman Calendar of Feasts of 354. The Catholic Encyclopedia wrote that the “martyrs of Albano have no connection with the Roman martyrs”.

The double tradition may have arisen because a second passio had to be written. It was written to account for the fact that there were five saints in group two rather than four. Thus, the story concerning group one was simply invented, and the story describes the death of four martyrs, who were soldiers from Rome rather than Pannonian stonemasons. The Bollandist Hippolyte Delehaye calls this invented tradition “l’opprobre de l’hagiographie” (the disgrace of hagiography).

Delehaye, after extensive research, determined that there was actually only one group of martyrs – the stonemasons of group two – whose relics were taken to Rome. One scholar has written that “the latest research tends to agree” with Delehaye’s conclusion.

The Roman Martyrology gives the stonemasons Simpronianus, Claudius, Nicostratus, Castorius and Simplicius as the martyrs celebrated on November 8, and the Albano martyrs Secundus, Carpophorus, Victorinus and Severianus as celebrated on August 8.

Enjoy a tour of the Roman Church built in their honor: