An Altarpiece of Ss Abdon and Sennen

Today is the feast of Ss Abdon and Sennen, two Persians who are said to have been martyred in Rome ca. 250, in the first general persecution of the Church under the emperor Decius. This is one of the most ancient feasts of the Roman Rite, attested on the calendar of the oldest surviving sacramentary, known as the Old Gelasian, ca. 700 A.D. Their names are on a mid-4th century list of martyrs’ burials in Rome, and a picture of them from the 6th or 7th century is preserved in the catacomb where their remains were brought in the time of the emperor Constantine (ca. 320).

A portrait of Ss Abdon and Sennen, the central panel of the altarpiece described below.  

The pre-Tridentine Roman breviary states that they were arrested in a Persia by Decius, and imprisoned for refusing to worship the pagans gods. Four months later, he had them brought to Rome, and presented to the Senate as enemies of the republic; when they persisted in their Christian faith, he ordered them to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena. As is so often the case, nature refused to cooperate with the persecutors, and the beasts lay down at their feet to guard them. They were therefore dispatched with the sword, and their bodies left to lie in front of the “idol of the sun”, i.e., the great statue that stood outside the Flavian amphitheater, and later gave it its nickname, the Colosseum. Three days later, a subdeacon named Quirinus was able to smuggle their bodies away to his house, and later give them a decent burial in one of the catacombs.

A modern representation of the Colosseum and the Colossus of Nero standing next to it; the statue itself disappeared in the ninth century, but the plinth can still be seen in its place to this day. (Image from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) 

In the Golden Legend of Bl. Jacopo da Voragine, the most popular collection of Saints’ lives in the high Middle Ages, the story begins differently. Decius conquers Babylon “with other provinces”, rather than Persia. There he finds many Christians, whom he brings in captivity to a place called “Corduba”, and kills them in various ways. Abdon and Sennen are arrested and brought to Rome as punishment for burying their bodies, and the story then continues in a similar vein.

Discrepancies of these sorts, and notable inaccuracies such as Decius’ purported invasion of Persia or Babylon, which never took place, or the mention of the unknown city “Corduba”, are a solid indicator that the story cannot be accepted as historically reliable. In the Tridentine breviary, therefore, it is reduced to a single lesson, mixing the two accounts, and stating that the cause of their martyrdom was their burial of other Christian martyrs. (“Corduba of the Persians” was mentioned in the original version, but later removed.)

At the end of the tenth century, the relics of the Saints (or perhaps just a part of them) were conveyed to the abbey of St Mary in the northern Catalonian town of Arles-sur-Tech. (This place is now in France, and should not be confused with the other Arles in Provence). From there, devotion to the Saints spread throughout Catalonia, while their names were somehow transformed into Nin and Non. In 1460, a Catalan painter named Jaume Huguet was commissioned to do an altarpiece dedicated to them for the cathedral complex of Terrassa, about 18½ miles to the northwest of Barcelona. It is still displayed there, one of the best-preserved examples of the International Gothic style in Catalonia.

To either side of the portrait of the Saints in the middle are shown episodes from their legend: upper left, their appearance before Decius; lower left, in the arena with the wild beasts; upper right, their beheading; lower right, their relics are translated to Catalonia. 

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Amador Alverez, CC BY-SA 3.0; item the six images following. 

The scene of their martyrdom.

The upper central panel of the Crucifixion.

The predella panels are dedicated to Saints Cosmas and Damian: their portrait in the center. 

Their martyrdom.

One of the most popular medieval legends about Cosmas and Damian in the Middle Ages, recounts that they replaced the cancerous leg of the sacristan of a Roman church with the leg of an Ethiopian who had recently died.

The altarpiece as it is now displayed in the church in Terrassa.

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Enric, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The three churches of the former cathedral complex of Terrassa, Catalonia, dedicated to St Peter, the Archangel Michael, and the Virgin Mary.