June 15th
STS. QUIRICUS & JULITTA
(Martyred/304 A.D.)
If we are to believe his Acts, which unfortunately are not very reliable, St. Quiricus was, next to the Holy Innocents, the youngest of all the martyrs. For many centuries his cult has been widespread. In Palestine and Syria, in Lydia, In Pontus, in Italy, France, and England, countless churches are dedicated to him.
He was, it is said, but three years old when, to escape Diocletian’s edicts of persecution, St. Julitta, his mother, fled from Iconium to Seleucia, then from Seleucia to Tarsus, taking the child with her. At Tarsus she was arrested and brought with her little boy before the governor. Called upon to apostatize, she refused, and was condemned to be flogged. As she was being beaten, she kept repeating: “I am a Christian,” and the infant St. Quiricus, whom the magistrate held on his knees, also never stopped crying: “I am a Christian.” These cries finally exasperated the governor Alexander, who took the child by one leg and flung him head first against the walls of the tribunal, and his skull was broken.
St. Julitta blessed God for having accepted the sacrifice of her son as a martyr of the faith. It was then decreed that she should be ripped apart with hooks. This being done, she was then beheaded.
Englebert/Howley