From the beginning of the 4th century for about 80 years, the pagan worship of the goddess Dia and the Christian one of the Portuensian Martyrs coexisted, with the temple of the goddess Dia at a very short distance from the Catacomb of Generosa. Possibly the latter prevailed over the former, anyway without completely replacing it.
The catacomb is named after the Roman matron Generosa, the owner of a quarryof the so-called grayish-brown Roman cappellaccio stone, suitable for bricks and pozzolana, at the sixth mile of the Via Campana. A catacomb was established in this quarry between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century. It was also called ad sextum Philippi or super Philippi, perhaps after the location’s landowner, possibly named Philippus. The term catacomb derives from the Greek katá kúmbas (καταˊ κυμβας), meaning “near the caves,” and indicates a complex of often superimposed underground tunnels used by early Christians as cemeteries.
We know from an 8th-century passio (story of the martyrs’ death) that the catacomb was the original burial place of the so-called Portuensian Martyrs.
During the Christian persecutions under Diocletian (303 AD), the christian brothers Simplicius and Faustinus were persecuted by pagan soldiers who would have thrown them from a pons lapideus (stone bridge, possibly the Pons Aemilius, now known as Ponte Rotto). Their sister Viatrix (later transformed into Beatrix due to an etymological shift) found their bodies dragged downstream by the current. She laid them in Generosa’s quarry with the help of the presbyters Crispus and John on July 29th 303. Viatrix was later martyred herself and buried next to her brothers by the matron Lucina, who previously helped in hiding and protecting her. The last of the Portuensian Martyrs is Rufinianus. A fresco still visible in the catacomb shows him wearing the clamis coccinea, a military cloak. This detail identifies him as the soldier who killed the brothers before converting, being persecuted, and subsequently killed himself.
The catacomb is formed by several spaces in a row: the main gallery (spelonca magna), the so-called Tomb of Generosa (where in an arcosolium is a fresco depicting the Good Shepherd), and the Tomb of the Martyrs. In the latter is the fresco of the Coronatio Martyrum (Crowning of the Martyrs), which depicts Jesus Christ offering the crown of martyrdom to Saints Simplicius, Faustinus, Viatrix, and Rufinianus. These rooms are followed by the Cemetery of the Infants, the Etruscan chamber, and galleries occupying a 2600 square meters wide area. The loculi (horizontal burial niches) are stacked in 3, 4, or rarely 5 rows: 800 intact tombs in 400 meters of galleries.
In 382 AD, the immunitas (immunity), which according to Roman law sanctioned the untouchability and inviolability of pagan places of worship, was repealed. After edicts were promulged to legalize above-ground burials, the Catacomb of Generosa was not used anymore and the surrounding area was transformed into a Christian sanctuary with the construction of the so-called Damasian Basilica or Damasian Oratory, named after Damasus (366 – 384 AD), the Pope who commissioned it.
Raids and instability convinced Pope Leo II, as recorded in the Liber Pontificalis (a record of the biographies of the popes), to close Christian houses of worship in the Roman countryside and move the relics from there to churches within the walls, to defend and preserve them. The site was later abandoned, to be rediscovered only in 1868 by the famous Christian archaeologist Giovanni Battista De Rossi.
The relics of the Portuensian Martyrs were brought to the church of Santa Bibiana in 682, in a casket identified by the inscription: “Martyres Simplicius et Faustinus qui passi sunt in flumen Tibere et positi sunt in Cimiterium Generoses super Filippi” (The martyrs Simplicius and Faustinus who died in the Tiber river and were buried in the Cemetery of Generosa on Philippus’s land). The relics are now at Santa Maria Maggiore. They were later scattered among a reliquary in the Marche region, the Escorial in Madrid, and the Monastery of Fulda in Germany, where they were brought by the Benedictine monk Wynfrith (canonized as Saint Boniface). Since 1982, Magliana and Fulda have been linked by a twinning agreement: the coat of arms of Fulda features three lilies representing the three martyred siblings, and there is a Maglianastraße (Magliana street) in Fulda and a Via Fulda (Fulda street) in Magliana.
The frescoes in the catacombs were restored in 1901, 1936, 1983, 1997, and 2013.
Reference Bibliography:
E. Venditti, Le Catacombe di Generosa alla Magliana, Roma 2000