Passion and Martyrdom
The recorded account of the martyrdom places Januarius at the center of a company of seven. Arrested during Diocletian's persecution, he was tried before Menignus, governor of Campania, and held firm in his confession of Christianity. The account relates that he was cast into a red-hot furnace yet emerged unharmed, as the youths of Babylon had, and was afterward beaten with iron rods.
His companions were drawn into the same suffering: the deacon Faustus and the reader Desiderius, weeping openly at their bishop's torments, were taken as Christians and imprisoned with him in the city of Puteolum, the modern Pozzuoli. The full company also numbered the deacons Proculus and Sossius and the laymen Eutychius and Acution.
By the account, the martyrs were led into the circus to be torn apart by wild beasts, but the beasts would not touch them. The governor then ordered them beheaded outside the city walls. Their death is dated to about the year 305.
Relics & Shrines
After his death the body of Januarius was taken to Neapolis (Naples), together with a quantity of his dried blood. Over the centuries his relics were moved repeatedly. According to Western accounts, his remains were transferred to the Neapolitan catacombs, later carried by Prince Sico of Benevento to Benevento while the head remained at Naples, and afterward moved to the Abbey of Montevergine, where they were rediscovered in 1480. In 1497 Cardinal Oliviero Carafa had the body brought back to Naples.
The Succorpo crypt beneath the Cathedral of Naples, commissioned by Carafa and completed in 1506, came to house the reunited remains. Naples Cathedral remains the principal shrine of the saint.
Veneration and the Relic of the Blood
Januarius is the principal patron saint of Naples, where he is known as San Gennaro, and he is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and the Armenian Apostolic Church. In the East his feast is kept on April 21; in the West it is observed on September 19.
A relic of his dried blood, kept at Naples, is the object of a long-reported phenomenon in which the blood is said to liquefy on certain occasions. Western sources record that the first documented liquefaction took place in 1389, and that thousands gather at Naples Cathedral on the days associated with the saint to witness the event.
By tradition, prayers to Januarius were credited with halting the flow of lava during an eruption of Vesuvius. From these traditions he came to be regarded as a protector of Naples and an intercessor against volcanic eruptions.
