Secundus of Asti

Saint Secundus of Asti (Italian: San Secondo di Asti) is venerated as an early Christian martyr and as the principal patron of the city and diocese of Asti in Piedmont, in northwestern Italy. Almost nothing about him can be established from contemporary historical documents. The biographical particulars that circulate rest on later hagiographical tradition, especially a Passio of legendary character, together with the ancient local cult that grew up around a martyr’s tomb at Asti. According to that tradition he belonged to a noble or patrician family of Asti (the Roman Hasta Pompeia) and served as a soldier in the imperial army in the early second century, during the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117–138). He is often depicted as a young officer or standard-bearer. No reliable evidence survives for an exact year of birth, and none should be inferred from the traditional year of his death.

The legendary Acts relate that Secundus was converted and baptized by Saint Calocerus (San Calocero), a Christian confessor then imprisoned at Asti. After his conversion he is said to have visited other Christians of the region, including Saint Marcian of Tortona, to have given alms, and to have professed the faith openly. Arrested and required to sacrifice to the pagan gods, he refused and was put to death by beheading. Tradition places the martyrdom at Asti itself, sometimes on the banks of the river Tanaro, and assigns it to the year 119. His body was recovered by the Christian community and buried. In later centuries the relics were enshrined in the crypt of the Collegiate Church of San Secondo (Collegiata di San Secondo) in Asti, a Romanesque church that remains the centre of his cult; a sarcophagus there is shown as his tomb.

The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 30 March with a brief notice of his martyrdom at Asti in Liguria. In Asti the cult has long been civic as well as liturgical. He is represented in art as a young soldier, frequently on horseback and bearing a banner or the palm of martyrdom. The city has honoured him with processions and the offering of a palio (a banner). From the medieval period a historic horse race, the Palio di Asti, has been associated with his patronage; local commemorations have also been held on the first Tuesday of May and on dates in September, while 30 March remains the date in the general Roman calendar. He is the patron saint of Asti and of its diocese. He was never the object of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval or modern type; his sainthood rests on the ancient veneration of a martyr, later reflected in martyrologies and liturgical books.

Because the written Passio is late and legendary, modern historians treat the narrative details with caution and regard Secundus primarily as an early martyr whose tomb at Asti became the focus of a well-attested local cult. No reliable evidence survives concerning his family life, any marriage or children, or membership in a religious order; the tradition presents him as a lay soldier and convert. He did not hold the office of pope or patriarch. The traditional death year 119 is retained as the date given in standard hagiographical reference works, but it depends on the legendary association with Hadrian’s reign rather than on a contemporary record.