Lawrence

Lawrence (Latin: Laurentius), one of the seven deacons of Rome, is among the most widely venerated martyrs of the early Church. Later Spanish tradition places his birth in Hispania Tarraconensis, often at Huesca (Osca) or sometimes Valencia, and names his parents as Orentius and Patientia, themselves later honored as saints; the fourth-century Christian poet Prudentius already treated Lawrence as a Spaniard by origin. He is said to have come to Rome, perhaps in association with the future Pope Sixtus II. There Lawrence was ordained to the diaconate and appointed archdeacon, the first of the seven deacons of the Roman Church. In that office he had charge of the Church’s material goods and, above all, of the daily distribution of alms to the poor, widows, and the sick—a ministry that made him a well-known figure in the Christian community of the capital.

The emperor Valerian, in 257–258, issued rescripts that targeted the higher clergy and forbade Christians to assemble in the cemeteries. On 6 August 258 Pope Sixtus II was arrested in the cemetery of Praetextatus and immediately beheaded, together with several of his deacons. The traditional narrative, already circulating in Rome by the later fourth century and given classic form by Ambrose of Milan and by Prudentius, relates that Lawrence encountered the pope being led to death and cried out that the priest should not go to martyrdom without his deacon. Sixtus answered that Lawrence would follow him in three days and that a sterner trial awaited him. The prefect of the city then summoned Lawrence and demanded the treasures of the Church that the deacon was known to administer. Lawrence asked for a brief interval in which to gather them. He used the time to assemble the poor, the blind, the lame, and the orphaned who were supported by the Church’s charity, and when the prefect arrived he presented this crowd as the Church’s true treasure.

On 10 August 258 Lawrence was put to death. From at least the time of Ambrose and Prudentius the Roman tradition held that he was slowly roasted on a gridiron over a fire, and that in the midst of his torment he addressed his executioners with words to the effect that they should turn him over because he was already cooked on one side. The gridiron became his almost universal attribute in Christian art. Critical historians have observed that the earliest contemporary notices do not specify the manner of death and that beheading, the fate of Sixtus and the other deacons, is perhaps more probable; the roasting story may be a later legendary elaboration, possibly encouraged by a misreading of the Latin. Regardless of the exact method, Lawrence’s martyrdom made an immediate and lasting impression on the Roman Church.

He was buried in the cemetery of Cyriaca on the Via Tiburtina, outside the walls. Constantine the Great caused a basilica to be built over the tomb in the fourth century; that church, repeatedly rebuilt and enlarged, is the present Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome. Lawrence’s name was inserted into the Roman Canon of the Mass, and his feast on 10 August was observed with a vigil and an octave in the medieval Roman liturgy. Churches, towns, and guilds throughout Europe and later the wider world took him as patron. He is invoked especially by deacons, by those who care for the poor, by librarians and archivists (in memory of his custody of the Church’s goods and records), by cooks and comedians (in memory of the gridiron and the jest), and against the danger of fire. His cult remains one of the most popular of the ancient Roman martyrs.