Quirinus of Sescia

Quirinus of Sescia
Statue in Halsteren, Netherlands
Bishop and martyr
Died	309 AD Sabaria, Pannonia, Roman Empire
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Major shrine	Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le mura, Rome, Italy
Feast	4 June
Attributes	Episcopal attire
Patronage	Sisak, Croatia

Quirinus (Croatian: Kvirin) (died 309 AD) is venerated as an early bishop of Sescia, now Sisak in Croatia. He is mentioned by Eusebius of Caesarea.

A Passio, considered unreliable, states that Quirinus was killed during the persecutions of Diocletian after being arrested in 309. Quirinus had attempted to flee but was imprisoned. He managed to convert his jailer, named Marcellus, to Christianity. After three days, the governor of Pannonia Prima, Amantius, ordered him taken to Sabaria (present-day Szombathely, Hungary), where after attempting to make Quirinus abjure his faith, threw the bishop into the local Gyöngyös River with a millstone around his neck.

A variant of the legend states that he was almost killed during Diocletian's persecution of Christians: the authorities tied him to a millstone and threw him into a river, but he freed himself from the weight, escaped and continued to preach his faith. Saint Florian, another saint associated with Pannonia, was also said to have been executed by drowning with a stone tied around his neck. The Acts of the martyrdom of the saint were collected in writing (Thierry Ruinart, "Acta martyrum", Ratisbon, 522), and a hymn was written in his honour by Prudentius (loc. cit., 524).

Local Christians of Savaria recovered his body and buried it near the gate known as the “Scarabateus” (likely at Sopron)

Upon the incursion of the barbarians into Pannonia at the end of the fourth century and at the beginning of the fifth, his relics were taken to Rome and deposited in a mausoleum or vaulted chamber named Platonia, behind the apse of the Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le mura on the Appian Way (De Waal, Die Apostelgruft ad Catacumbas an der via Appia, Rome, 1894). The "Platonia" was a construction at the rear of the basilica; it was long believed to have been the temporary tomb for Peter and Paul, but was a tomb for Quirinus.