Martyrs Chrysanthus and Daria

Chrysanthus was the son of a Roman senator named Polemius of Alexandrian extraction, brought to Rome in his youth in the middle of the third century and given the finest education of his class. As a young man he was struck by the Acts of the Apostles, which had fallen into his hands; he sought out Christians of Rome, was instructed by a presbyter named Carpophorus, and was baptized in secret. When his father, alarmed at the change in his son's manner of life, discovered his conversion, Polemius attempted to bring him back to paganism by every art known to the Roman tradition — including, finally, by setting up his marriage to a beautiful Vestal virgin named Daria, in the expectation that her piety to the Roman gods would draw Chrysanthus back to the family religion.

Instead, when Chrysanthus and Daria came to know one another, he converted her to Christianity. They agreed to live as brother and sister rather than as husband and wife, and to use their household as a center of Christian witness and almsgiving. Many of their household servants and friends were drawn to the faith through their example.

Denounced under the Emperor Numerian (283–284), they were arrested, examined separately, subjected to a long sequence of torments, and finally — when no other method had broken them — they were buried alive together in a deep sand-pit on the Salarian Way outside Rome. The pit was sealed above them. Their joint feast falls on March 19.