Getulius

Saint Getulius (also called Getulio or Gaetulius) is venerated in the Western Church as a Christian martyr of the early second century. The principal notices of his life come from a late passio of legendary character and from the Roman Martyrology, rather than from contemporary documents, so the details that follow belong to hagiographical tradition and cannot be confirmed by independent historical evidence. According to that tradition he was a well-born and highly educated native of Gabii, an ancient town in Latium associated in the sources with the Sabine country, who served as an officer in the Roman army. After his conversion to Christianity he resigned his commission and withdrew to his estates in the countryside near Tivoli (Tibur) or Gabii, where he lived a retired life of prayer and instruction. He was the husband of Saint Symphorosa; the same tradition ascribes to the couple seven sons—Crescens, Julian, Nemesius, Primitivus, Justinus, Stacteus, and Eugenius—who were later commemorated as martyrs with their mother.

During the reign of the Emperor Hadrian (117–138), Getulius’s activity in converting others is said to have drawn imperial attention. Hadrian reportedly sent an officer named Cerealis to arrest him. Cerealis, however, was himself converted by Getulius’s preaching and example. Two further officials, Amantius and Primitivus, were likewise won over. The four men were then seized, tortured, and put to death. Accounts of the manner of execution vary: they were beaten with clubs and beheaded, or, in other versions, thrown into a river with stones about their necks. The Roman Martyrology places their passion at Rome on the Via Salaria. Saint Symphorosa is said to have recovered the bodies and buried them in an arenarium (a sand-pit used for burial) on her own estate.

Not long afterward, according to the related Acts of Symphorosa—themselves regarded by modern scholars as a later legendary composition, possibly influenced by the story of Saint Felicitas and her seven sons—Symphorosa and the seven sons were also martyred under Hadrian. Getulius’s own cult, together with that of Cerealis, Amantius, and Primitivus, is attested in the martyrological tradition and is kept on 10 June. Like other early martyrs he belongs to the pre-congregational period of the Church’s recognition of saints and was not the subject of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval or modern type. Critical historians treat the narrative as largely unhistorical in its particulars, while acknowledging that a local cult of Getulius and his companions existed in the Roman countryside in late antiquity.