St. Erasmus (left) with St. Maurice Peter was an exorcist, whom, in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, Serenus the Judge cast into prison at Rome because he confessed the Christian faith. He there set free Paulina, the daughter of Artemius, the keeper of the prison, from an evil spirit which tormented her. Upon this, Artemius and his wife and all their house, with their neighbours who had run together to see the strange thing, would fain be made friends with Jesus Christ. Peter therefore brought them to Marcellinus, the Priest, who baptized them all. When Serenus heard of it, he called Peter and Marcellinus before him, and sharply rebuked them, adding to his bitter words threats and terrors, unless they would deny Christ. Marcellinus answered him with Christian boldness, whereupon he caused him to be buffeted, separated him from Peter and shut him up naked in a prison strewn with broken glass, without either food or light. Peter also he straitly confined. But when both of them were found to wax faithfuller and braver in their bonds, they were beheaded, unshaken in their testimony, and confessing Jesus Christ gloriously by their blood. Erasmus was a Bishop in Campánia who, in the reign of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian was beaten with clubs and whips loaded with lead, and afterwards anointed with melted pitch, sulphur, and lead, and boiling resin, wax, and oil. From all this he came forth whole and sound; which wonder turned many to believe in Christ. He was remanded again to prison, and straitly bound in heavy iron fetters, and from these he was wondrously delivered by an angel. At last, at Formi, Maximian caused him to be subjected to divers torments, and in the end being clad in a coat of red-hot brass the power of God made him to be more than conqueror in this thing also, and to grasp the palm-branch of a glorious testimony, whereby he strengthened many in the faith and turned many to it.
