Faustinus and Jovita

Saints Faustinus and Jovita are Christian martyrs associated with Brescia in northern Italy and traditionally assigned to the second century. Hagiographical accounts describe them as brothers of a noble Brescian family. Faustinus is generally called a priest and Jovita a deacon. Although the Latin name Jovita is grammatically feminine and some later works of art depicted Jovita as a woman, the church of Brescia and the Roman Martyrology treat both as men. Legend places their public preaching in the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117–138), during a persecution that the later Acts portray in conventional terms not confirmed by contemporary historical evidence.

The surviving Acts relate that Bishop Apollonius of Brescia ordained the brothers and that they converted many people by preaching and miracles. They are said to have been arrested, tortured by fire and by wild beasts, taken to other cities including Milan and Rome, and finally brought back to Brescia and beheaded. These episodes belong to the stock repertoire of legendary martyr acts. Critical hagiographers, including the Bollandists, regard the narrative as historically unreliable and possibly composed to explain relics already honored in the city. No contemporary Roman or Christian source confirms their names, trial, or death. The year of martyrdom often given, around 120, is only an inference from the Hadrianic setting of the legend, not a documented date. No reliable source records a year of birth.

A cult of Faustinus and Jovita is nonetheless deeply rooted in Brescia. Their relics are venerated in the church of Santi Faustino e Giovita, also called San Faustino Maggiore, which was for centuries attached to an important Benedictine monastery and remains one of the principal churches of the city. They are the patron saints of Brescia and of its diocese. Their feast day is 15 February. In the revision of the General Roman Calendar in 1969 the celebration was removed from the universal calendar and left to local calendars, on the ground that the Acts are legendary; they continue to be listed in the Roman Martyrology and are still kept with solemnity in Brescia.

They are not known to have belonged to a religious order, to have married, or to have held the papacy or a patriarchate. Their cult is of the ancient, pre-congregation kind rather than the result of a formal papal canonization or beatification. They should not be confused with Faustinus, a later bishop of Brescia of the fourth century. The historical importance of Faustinus and Jovita lies in the civic and liturgical identity of Brescia, where they have been invoked as protectors of the city from the early Middle Ages to the present.