[Rank]
Four Crowned Martyrs;;Simplex;;1.1;;vide C3

[Oratio]
Grant, we beseech thee, O Almighty God, that we who know thy glorious witnesses to have been in their testifying leal toward thee, may feel, now that they are with thee, that they are in their prayers pitiful towards us.
$Per Dominum

[Lectio93]
In the persecution under Diocletian four brothers named Severus, Severian, Carpophorus, and Victorinus, boldly refused to worship the gods, and were lashed with whips loaded with lead until they gave up their lives for Christ's Name's sake under the strokes. Their bodies were thrown out to be eaten by the dogs, but as they remained untouched after a long while, the Christians took them away, and buried them in a sand-pit upon the Lavican Way at the third milestone from the City, hard by the grave of the holy martyrs Claudius, Nicostratus, Symphorian, Castorius, and Simplicius, who had suffered under the same Emperor, because being excellent sculptors they could nowise be brought to make figures of idols, and when they were brought to the image of the Sun to do reverence to it, they had said they would never worship the works of men's hands. For this reason they were thrown into prison, and when after many days they were still found of the same mind, they were first lashed with scourges armed with hooks, and then soldered up alive in leaden coffins and thrown into the river. There is in the City of Rome a Church called that of the Four Holy Crowned. Their actual names were long unknown, but afterwards made manifest by God. In this Church are honourably buried the bodies of these four, and also those of the other five; and a Festival is held in their honour upon the 8th day of November.
&teDeum