Saints Felix and Adauctus

Felix and Adauctus are two Roman martyrs, probably killed under Diocletian, and their cult is documented at least from the fourth century — there is a poem Pope Damasus dedicated to them, and it was he, with the priest Verus, who arranged their tombs in the cemetery of Commodilla, on the Via Ostiense. Damasus calls them brothers. A much later passio, from the seventh century and clearly legendary, tells a different story instead, and that’s the version that caught on. Felix was a priest, sentenced to death for refusing to sacrifice to the idols. As he was being led to execution, a man in the crowd — a Christian nobody knew anything about — stepped forward and declared that he believed the same thing. He was condemned along with him, on the spot. That man’s name was never known. They called him *adauctus*, which in Latin simply means “added”: the one who joined in. And with that name, which isn’t a name, he entered the calendar and stayed there for sixteen hundred years. The underground basilica of Saints Felix and Adauctus, in the cemetery of Commodilla, was built under Pope John I and rediscovered by Orazio Marucchi in excavations between 1903 and 1905. If your name is Felix, today is your name day.