1 March
AT ROME, two hundred and sixty holy martyrs condemned for the name of Christ. Claudius ordered them to dig sand beyond the Salarian gate, and then to be shot dead with arrows by soldiers in the amphitheatre.—Also, the birthday of the holy martyrs Leo, Donatus, Abundantius, Nicephorus, and nine others.—At Marseilles, the holy martyrs Hermes and Adrian.—At Heliopolis, in the persecution of Trajan, St. Eudoxia, martyr, who, being baptized by bishop Theodotus and fortified for the combat, was put to the sword by the command of the governor Vincent, and thus received the crown of martyrdom.—The same day, St. Antonina, martyr. For deriding the gods of the Gentiles, in the persecution of Diocletian, she was, after various torments, shut up in a cask and drowned in a marsh near the city of Cea.—At Kaiserswerth, the bishop St. Swidbert, who, in the time of pope Sergius, preached the Gospel to the inhabitants of Friesland, Holland, and to other Germanic peoples.—At Angers, St. Albinus, bishop and confessor, a man of most eminent virtue and piety.— At Le Mans, St. Siviard, abbot.—At Perugia, the translation of St. Herculanus, bishop and martyr, who was beheaded by order of Totila, king of the Goths. Forty days after his decapitation his body, as pope St. Gregory relates, was found as sound and as firmly joined to the head as if it had never been touched by the sword.
And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors and holy virgins.
Thanks be to God.