ROMANUS OF CAESAREA, DEACON AND MARTYR

The towns, now known as famous seaside resorts, were once places of veneration for saints. It is surprising that the memory of Saint Romanus of Caesarea, deacon and martyr, is celebrated on December 1st. Winter begins with the feast of the patron saint of the Catalan maritime town of Lloret del Mar.

1 Eusebius of Caesarea describes the suffering of the holy martyr Romanus in the second chapter of his “Book of the Palestinian Martyrs.” During Diocletian’s long reign, Christians were persecuted for years on individual charges, but in 303, the emperor began their systematic extermination. The first radical measures involved the liquidation of church representatives. Bishops and deacons held special importance in the early Church of that time. The ministry of deacons was administrative, liturgical, and social in nature.

According to Eusebius, Romanus was a native Palestinian and a deacon in Caesarea Maritima, Palestine, where Eusebius himself later served as bishop. During the persecution, Romanus was in Antioch. “Before his eyes, a multitude of men, women, and children approached the idols and offered sacrifices to them.” It is evident that, as in all ages, among those offering there were both conscious apostates and those who did so out of cowardice or who did not understand the essence of what was happening. Romanus tried to dissuade them. According to Eusebius, “he approached them and began to warn them loudly.”

3 He was arrested and sentenced to death at the stake. He listened willingly to the sentence, without fear or panic. The executioners tied him to a stake and laid out firewood, waiting for the order. Because Romanus began to preach at that moment, boldly demanding fire, the judge commuted the sentence to cutting out his tongue to avoid the people’s sympathy for the Christians. “Romanus” could have been a proper name or a reference to Roman origin or citizenship. Perhaps for this reason, the executioners treated him according to a certain logic, albeit with extreme cruelty. Roman law generally did not provide for two punishments for the same crime. Perhaps guided by this principle, or simply by the belief that Romanus would soon die of blood loss, he was imprisoned. But he was far from dead.

4 Fearing that influential Christians might free him by bribing the police, as Anastasia, the later great martyr of the same period and nicknamed “Liberator from Bonds,” did at her own expense, Roman was tied to a board stretched with string. “On the feast of the emperor’s twentieth reign, when, by the power of the so-called universal forgiveness, freedom was proclaimed everywhere and to all prisoners, he alone remained in his captivity,” writes Eusebius. Roman died of the tortures he had endured.

5 The memory of Saint Roman is celebrated on December 1, the day of his martyrdom in heaven, which took place on November 18, 303. He is considered the patron saint of the pearl of the Catalan region of Costa Brava, the town of Lloret del Mar, where the main church bears his name.