Santo Stefano Rotondo al Celio

Chapel of Sts Primus and Felician

WARNING
The images in these frescoes contain explicit and realistic depictions of torture and suffering. Some people may find the images upsetting. To return to main page click here.

The unreliable legend of the saints states that they were brothers from a patrician family, who visited Christians who were being kept for execution in the Roman prisons. They were spotted, arrested and interrogated separately. The judge told Felician that his brother, at the time some eighty years old, had lapsed from the Faith. But they both persevered, and they were thrown to the lions together. At the amphitheatre they were miraculously kept safe when the lions refused to eat them, and were taken to Nomentum (present-day Mentana) where they were beheaded and buried.

In 644 this chapel was commissioned by Pope Theodore I (642-649), who used one of the cross arms of the 5th century edifice. The saints are depicted in a mosaic in the conch of the apse which the pope commissioned, and there are also wall frescoes depicting their martyrdom and burial executed by Antonio Tempesta in 1586.