Rufina and Secunda
Rufina and Secunda were two Roman Christian virgins and martyrs who died in 257 during Emperor Valerian’s persecutions. Their feast is July 10. Legend says they were daughters of a Roman senator named Asterius. Their fiancés, Armentarius and Verinus, were Christians but renounced their faith during the persecutions. Rufina and Secunda fled to Etruria, were captured before a prefect, tortured, and beheaded. Their bodies were buried on the Via Aurelia, and the church of Sante Rufina e Secunda was built in Rome in their honor.
Modern notes say little is known beyond their names and that they were buried at the ninth milestone of the Via Cornelia; relics were later moved to the Lateran Basilica. They are mentioned in ancient calendars, and Pope Damasus I built a Basilica over their grave. A town named Santa Rufina grew at the site and became a diocese, later united with Porto as Porto-Santa Rufina. Their feast was once classified differently in the liturgical calendars, but today they may be celebrated with their own Mass on July 10 anywhere, unless a local obligation applies.
In art they are often shown as two maidens floating in the Tiber River with weights around their necks. In the 1620s three Italian painters—Il Morazzone, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, and Giovanni Battista Crespi—created a painting of their martyrdom, known as the Martyrdom of Saints Rufina and Secunda.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 05:10 (CET).