Saint Susanna

Saint Susanna of Rome is venerated as a Christian virgin martyr associated with the city of Rome in the later third century. Almost nothing about her life can be established from contemporary historical documents. Her name appears in early martyrological tradition, including the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, and she is linked to an ancient Roman titular church on the Quirinal Hill, known as the titulus Gaii and later as the titulus Sanctae Susannae. That church, the present Church of Santa Susanna ad duas domos, became one of the station churches of Rome and has long been held to stand on the site of her family home and to preserve relics connected with her cult. Her feast is kept on 11 August. In the Tridentine calendar she was commemorated together with Saint Tiburtius on that day. After the calendar reform of 1969 her celebration was omitted from the General Roman Calendar because of the legendary character of her Acts, though she remains inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.

The only extended narrative of her life is the Latin Passio Sanctae Susannae, a hagiographical composition that critical scholars from the time of Louis Duchesne and Hippolyte Delehaye onward have judged to be largely fictitious and of relatively late date. According to this legend, Susanna was of noble Roman birth, the daughter of the priest Gabinius (Gabinus), himself later honored as a saint, and the niece of Pope Caius (Gaius), bishop of Rome from 283 to 296. The story places her in a Christian household of senatorial standing during the reign of the emperor Diocletian. Diocletian is said to have desired that she marry a kinsman or a member of the imperial house; versions of the tale differ in naming the intended husband, sometimes connecting him with Maximian or Galerius. Susanna, who had already dedicated her virginity to God, refused the alliance.

The Passio then recounts a succession of attempts to force her compliance. Officials and relatives were sent to persuade or coerce her; some of those who came into contact with her are described as converting to Christianity. Her father and other members of the household are portrayed as sharing her confession of faith. When she persisted in refusing both marriage and sacrifice to the pagan gods, she was put to death by beheading in her own house. Traditional accounts assign this martyrdom to the year 295, in the period of growing imperial hostility to Christians that preceded the edicts of the Great Persecution in 303, but that date depends entirely on the legendary narrative and cannot be independently verified. The same legendary cycle also presents Pope Caius and Gabinius as martyrs, a claim that conflicts with the historical evidence that Pope Caius died a natural death.

Because the Passio cannot be treated as a reliable historical source, the precise circumstances of Susanna’s life and death remain unknown. Historians accept that a martyr named Susanna was venerated in Rome at an early date and that her cult became attached to the Quirinal titulus, but they regard the imperial marriage plot, the close kinship with Pope Caius, and the detailed household drama as literary invention typical of later Roman passion narratives. Despite these reservations, devotion to Saint Susanna continued through the Middle Ages and into the modern period at the church that bears her name. The building, rebuilt at various times, remains a significant monument of Roman Christian topography. No well-documented list of specific patronages is attached to her in the major liturgical and hagiographical authorities, and she was never the subject of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval or modern type; her cult belongs to the ancient, so-called pre-congregation veneration of the Roman martyrs.