Basilides, Ss.
BASILIDES, SS.
Martyr; d. Alexandria, 202–203. A soldier, he protected St. Potamiaena from the crowd as he led her, after tortures, to her martyrdom under boiling pitch. She promised to repay him for his kindness, and when Basilides was imprisoned as a Christian for refusing to take an oath, she appeared to him, wreathed his head with a crown, and promised soon to take him to herself. Basilides was baptized and the next day beheaded, the seventh catechumen of origen to suffer martyrdom. His story, which is preserved by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 6.5), is one of the earliest testimonies in the Church to belief in the intercession of saints. In the martyrology of Jerome, he is commemorated on June 28 with Potamiaena and her martyred mother, Marcella.
Feast: June 30.
On June 12 the Roman martyrology commemorates a Basilides with Cyrinus, Nabor, and Nazarius. He was a Roman martyr buried at the twelfth milestone of the Via Aurelia, where there was a shrine to him in the seventh century. The three accounts of him are late and without historical value, and there is no connection between him and Cyrinus (probably Quirinus, bishop of Siscia) and Nabor and Nazarius (martyrs of Milan).
Bibliography: a. p. frutaz and a. kreuz, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (Freiburg 1957–65) 2:39–40. b. cignitti and f. caraffa, Bibliotheca Sanctorum 2:904–906.
[m. j. costelloe]