Church of Saints Ciro and Giovanni
Santa Passera

The church of S. Passera is located on via Magliana, near the right bank of the Tiber, almost opposite the basilica of S. Paolo outside the walls.
As usually happens for almost all ancient monuments, the origins of this small church are shrouded in a veil of uncertainty, which the lack of sources does not allow to dissolve.

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According to tradition, the church is dedicated to the martyrs Cyrus and John, two Alexandrian saints, who were crucified and beheaded during the persecution of Diocletian at Canopus in Egypt. St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, brought the two bodies to Menouthis (today's Abukir), to the local church, which has since become one of the most famous sanctuaries in Egypt.

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Later their bodies would have been transported from Menouthis to Rome, but we have no certain information in this regard.

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In the Roman Martyrology we read on January 31: “Romae, Viae Portuensi sanctorum Martyrum Cyri et Joannis, qui, pro confessione Christi, post multa tormenta, capite truncati sunt”. This date probably recalls the day when the bodies of the two saints arrived in Rome.

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According to a legend transcribed by a certain Gualtiero during the pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216), two monks named Grimoaldo and Arnolfo in 407, at the time of the emperors Arcadio and Onorio, after a premonitory dream, removed the bodies of the two martyrs from the porphyry urn in which they were contained in Manouthis, considering them in danger from the invasion of the Saracens in Egypt, with the aim of bringing them to safety in Rome. After landing first in Constantinople, then in Bari, the two monks finally arrived in Rome, where they were welcomed by the rich widow Theodora, in her house in Trastevere. During the following night the two martyrs appeared to Theodora in a dream and ordered her to carry their bodies out of the city, to the small church she had built in her possessions along the via Portuense, in which she already kept a relic, an arm of St. Praxedes given to her by the Pope. Once the news of the arrival of the two martyrs' bodies spread throughout the city, Innocent III himself, accompanied by all the clergy, took care of their transport to the small church, where many faithful immediately flocked. For fear of possible desecration, the two bodies were buried in such a secret and hidden place, so that they could never be found again. The head of S. Ciro was instead placed on the altar, inside a silver urn.

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Theodora offered all her surrounding lands to the church as patrimony, so that nothing was lacking in the decorum of the temple and she retired to monastic life. Regarding the reliability of this legend, it must be noted that it contains some contradictions. Thus, for example, the occupation of Egypt by the Saracens did not take place in the fifth century, but in the eighth. Furthermore, when Sophronius wrote the Acts of the two martyrs Cyrus and John (610-620) no doubt their bodies were in the church of Menouthis.

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Following the serious dangers that the sanctuaries of the martyrs ran due to the invasions of the Saracens, many relics were transported safely to Rome. Nor can it therefore be excluded that the bodies of Cyrus and John were also translated, but it is very difficult to be able to establish when this could have happened. In this regard Sinthern writes: "... although legend has it that the bodies of these two saints were transferred from Alexandria to Rome at the time of Innocent I in the beginning of the fifth century, it is still a fact by now very certain that neither this indication of the time nor the other all contradictory of the legend itself can in any way be considered as exact. According to the legend itself, which is fixed in 1206, the translation of the holy bodies could not have occurred before the second half of the eleventh century or at least in the tenth century". Furthermore, if the transfer of the remains to S. Passera actually took place, “this could not in any way happen before the twelfth century; being that Peter of Naples, who wrote a very valuable legend of the two saints about the year 1000, says that in his time they were still in their church near Alexandria in Egypt, and continued to work great miracles there. So also in a Vatican Greek code, written in the tenth-third century, in which a true collection of legends relating to the Saints was made. Ciro e Giovanni, there is no mention of such a translation, although the codex was written in the vicinity of Rome, in Grottaferrata".

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The problem of actually transporting the bodies of the two martyrs to Rome and, consequently, to S. Passera, is far from being resolved. In any case it can be said that in all probability some relics, believed to belong to Cyrus and John, were kept in the church and venerated for many centuries, as the epigraph placed at the entrance to the basement also testifies.