Church of Saints Marcellinus and Peter 'al Laterano'

Catecombs and Church dedicated to 4th Century Martyrs

At the intersection of Via Merulana and Via Labicana, this station church during Lent has an elegant 18th-century appearance. The bodies of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, to whom the church is dedicated, were never here, but are kept in the catacombs that bear their name. 

Their bones were transported in the 9th century to the Abbey of Saligenstad on the Main in Ger mania by Einhard, adviser and friend of Charlemagne. The present church was built in the 18th century by Benedict XIV, the pope who also had the facades and loggias of St. Mary Major and St. Cross in Jerusalem rebuilt. The old church had a strange irregular plan that is known from some engravings made shortly before the demolition.

During the demolition of the old church in the 18th century a fragment of an inscription was found with the name of a 4th-century pope, Siricius, who may have been the founder of the church. From the late 6th century it is mentioned under the name of the two martyrs of the Via Labicana, buried in the cemetery of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter near the Mausoleum of Helena. And it was in the 6th century that veneration for the martyrs of the Roman catacombs also spread to the city within the walls, as evidenced by the churches of St. Sixtus and Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, near the Baths of Caracalla and not far from the urban church of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter.

The exorcist Peter and the presbyter Marcellinus, who suffered martyrdom under Domitian and Maximian in 304, are frescoed above the high altar where the unknown painter was able to infuse it with a breath of exquisite spirituality.

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