Quirinus of Neuss

Quirinus is introduced into the legendary Acts of Sts. Pope Alexander I and Balbina, where it is said he was a tribune (Dufourcq, loc. cit., 175). He is said to have been decapitated in 116. Legends make him a Roman tribune who was ordered with executing Alexander, Eventius, and Theodolus, who had been arrested by order of Trajan. as also was his daughter Balbina. Quirinus was condemned to have his tongue, hands and feet cut off. According to the popular legend, which is often represented in art, his tongue was offered to a falcon, but the bird refused to eat it: the Acts say nothing of it. The hands and feet were in like manner cast to dogs, and popular tradition adds that they refused to devour them. Afterwards he was drawn by oxen to the place of final execution where he was decapitated. He is believed to have been buried in the catacomb of Prætextatus on the Via Appia. ==Veneration==

Ado took the name from these Acts and put it in his Martyrology for the date of 30 March, the day it was to be found in the Roman Martyrology (Quentin, 490). The latest edition of the Roman Martyrology commemorates Quirinus on 30 April. Saint Quirinus is the patron saint of the city of Neuss. According to a document from Cologne dating from 1485, Quirinus' body was donated in 1050 by Pope Leo IX to an abbess of Neuss named Gepa (who is called a sister of the pope).). Inhabitants of Neuss invoked Quirinus' aid during the Siege of Neuss by Charles the Bold, 1474–5. Portraits of Quirinus and of Valentine appear at the top of the recto of the Nuremberg Chronicles (Folio CXXII [Geneva]). ==References==