Lorentino d'Arezzo

Lorentino d'Arezzo, also known by the Latin name Laurentinus, was a Christian martyr of the third century associated with the city of Arezzo in Tuscany. Together with his brother Pergentino (Pergentinus), he is recorded in the Roman Martyrology as having suffered at Arezzo during the persecution of the emperor Decius. Tradition describes the brothers as members of a noble family of Arezzo who were converted to Christianity and baptized by Saint Donatus, bishop of that city.

When Decius ordered a general sacrifice to the gods in 250, Christians who refused were subject to arrest and punishment. According to the later passio of the two brothers, Lorentino and Pergentino were seized and brought before a governor named Tiburtius. They declined to offer the required sacrifice, underwent torture, and were beheaded. Their martyrdom is traditionally dated to 251, near the end of Decius's reign. The surviving narrative of their passion is of medieval composition and includes legendary features common to such texts; independent contemporary evidence for the details of their trial does not exist.

A church in Arezzo, the Chiesa dei Santi Lorentino e Pergentino, has long been dedicated to the brother martyrs and is linked to the custody of their relics. Their feast day is observed on 3 June. The cult of Lorentino and Pergentino belongs to the ancient layer of Tuscan hagiography and was never the object of a formal canonization process of the type that developed in the later Middle Ages. Historians accept the existence of an early local cult of two martyrs of these names while remaining cautious about the biographical particulars supplied by the medieval acts.

Little else can be verified concerning Lorentino's life. No reliable source records his exact year of birth, any marriage or children, or membership in a religious order. He is venerated as a saint and martyr in the Catholic Church, remembered above all as one of the early Christian witnesses of Arezzo.