Martyrs Nazarius, Gervasius, Protasius, and Celsus

Nazarius, Gervasius, Protasius, and Celsus were Italian martyrs of the apostolic age — by the older tradition, contemporaries of the apostle Peter at Rome. Nazarius was the son of a Jewish father (Africanus) and a Christian mother (Perpetua, baptized, the tradition says, by Peter himself); he was raised in the faith and traveled through Italy, Gaul, and Spain preaching the Gospel. He took with him the boy Celsus, whom his own mother had entrusted to him.

Gervasius and Protasius were twin brothers of Milan, born to the senator Vitalis and his wife Valeria — themselves martyred for the faith. The four came together at Milan and were arrested by the order of Nero (or, in some accounts, an earlier authority). Gervasius and Protasius were beheaded at Milan; Nazarius and the boy Celsus, who had escaped, were arrested later in their travels and beheaded at Rome.

The graves of Gervasius and Protasius were revealed to Ambrose of Milan in 386 by a vision in his sleep — Ambrose recounts the discovery in his own letters. The translation of their relics into the new basilica he had built brought such a manifest miracle (a blind butcher named Severus regained his sight by touching their bier) that Augustine, then in Milan, witnessed it and writes of it. Their joint feast falls on October 14.