CLAUDIUS AND COMPANIONS, SS.

Claudius, Asterius, Neon, Domnina, and Theonilla, saints and martyrs of Aegaeae in Cilicia in 285; commemorated in the Western martyrologies on August 23 and in the Greek synaxaries on October 30 and January 27. Two late Latin recensions of their acts are still extant; both of them are different in detail from the two abbreviated accounts of their martyrdom in the Synaxary of Constantinople and the Menology of Basil. According to the Latin texts, "three brothers and two women with an infant" were brought before Lysias, the governor of the province. After the interrogation, torture, and condemnation of Claudius, Asterius, and Neon, Domnina was stripped and beaten to death. Theonilla was cruelly tortured and slain by having burning coals heaped on her stomach. Neither the Synaxary of Constantinople nor the Menology of Basil mention Domnina. This fact, and the incongruities in the second part of the Latin acts, led Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri to suspect that the deaths of the two women were later added by two different hands to explain what had happened to them. Nothing is said about the child. If the accounts of the martyrdom of the women belong to the original protocol, the child must have been Domnina's since Theonilla declared that she had been a widow for 23 years.

Bibliography: p. franchi de' cavalieri, "Su gli atti dei SS. Claudio, Asterio e Neone," Note Agiografiche 5 (Studi e Testi 27;1915) 107–126.

[m. j. costelloe]