St. Quirinus of Siscia

Bishop and martyr. The bishop of Siscia, Croatia, he reportedly fled his see during the persecutions of Emperor Galerius but was arrested and dragged back to Sisc ia. There he was ordered to make sacrifices to the gods by Maximus, the Roman magistrate. Upon his refusal, he was tortured and then given into the hands of Amantius, the governor of Pannonia Prima. Stubborn in his refusal to become an apostate, he was tied to a millstone and hurled into the Raab River, where he drowned at Sabaria. In the fifth century and the invasion of the Danube Valley by Germanic hosts, the inhabitants fled to Italy, taking the relics of Quirinus with them. They were eventually carried to Rome and interred in the Church of St. Sebastian on the Via Appia.