Sunday 10th August 2014

St Lawrence – 258

Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome and was executed on 10th August 258, four days after Sixtus II and his companions. A basilica was built over Lawrence’s tomb fifty years after his death, by the Emperor Constantine, and the anniversary of his martyrdom was kept as a solemn feast. By the sixth century, it was one of the most important feasts throughout much of western Christendom. His name occurs (with Sixtus’s) in the Roman Canon of the Mass.