Saint Lawrence: Deacon and Martyr of the Gridiron

Saint Lawrence (Laurentius) was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome, keeper of her goods and of the alms of the poor, martyred in August 258 under the Emperor Valerian, four days after his bishop, Pope St Sixtus II. Tradition, received from St Ambrose and the poet Prudentius, holds that he was roasted to death on an iron gridiron and that he jested with his executioners from the fire. Named in the Canon of the Mass, he has been since the fourth century one of the most honoured martyrs of the whole Church, and his feast falls on 10 August, a feast of the second class in the 1962 calendar.

Who was Saint Lawrence?

"There are few martyrs in the Church whose names are so famous as that of St Laurence," Butler's Lives of the Saints begins, recalling that the greatest of the Latin Fathers wrote his praises and that, in the words of St Maximus of Turin, the whole Church joins in honouring his triumph.

Lawrence was one of the seven deacons who served the Roman Church. The office was one of great trust: to the deacons belonged the care of the Church's goods and the distribution of her alms to the poor, the widows and the orphans, and Lawrence was the first among them, the archdeacon at the side of the Pope. A later tradition makes him a native of Spain, from Huesca in Aragon, sent to Rome to serve Sixtus; Butler does not record it, and we give it only as the Spanish tradition. On the deacon's office in the Church's hierarchy, see our page on Holy Orders.

In 257 the Emperor Valerian published edicts against the Christians, aimed at the clergy and at the property of the Church. In August 258 Pope St Sixtus II was seized while celebrating the sacred mysteries in one of the cemeteries of Rome and put to death with several of his deacons. "That is all that is known for certain of the life and death of St Laurence", Butler says frankly: on the fourth day after, Lawrence followed his bishop to martyrdom. Everything else comes to us through St Ambrose, Prudentius and the ancient tradition of Rome, which the Church has made her own in her liturgy.

"These are the treasures of the Church"

As Sixtus was led to execution, Lawrence followed him weeping: "Father, where are you going without your deacon? You never offered sacrifice without your minister." The Pope answered: "I do not leave you, my son. Greater combats await you. You shall follow me in three days."

Lawrence, full of joy, went at once to seek out the poor of the Church and gave them all the money in his keeping, even selling the sacred vessels to increase the sum. The prefect of Rome, hearing of it and supposing the Christians hid great wealth, summoned him and demanded the treasures of the Church for the emperor: "I am told that according to your doctrine you must render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Lawrence answered calmly that the Church was indeed rich, richer than the emperor, and asked three days to set everything in order and make an inventory.

During those three days he went through the city gathering the poor whom the Church supported. On the third day he placed them in rows, the blind, the lame, the maimed, the lepers, orphans and widows, and invited the prefect to come and see. When the prefect, astonished and furious, asked where the treasures were, Lawrence said: "These are the treasure of the Church."

The saying has never ceased to teach. The Church's riches are not her gold but her poor, and the alms given them are laid up in heaven, as the Epistle of his Mass declares: "He who soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly: and he who soweth in blessings shall also reap blessings... for God loveth a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:6–7, Douay-Rheims). Lawrence is the deacon of the works of mercy.

How did Saint Lawrence die? The gridiron

The prefect cried out: "You mock me! I know that you desire to die: but you shall not die immediately, as you imagine. You shall die by inches." He had a great gridiron made ready, with glowing coals beneath it, and Lawrence was stripped and bound upon it, to be slowly roasted. The Christians saw his face surrounded with light and smelt a sweet fragrance from his body. St Augustine says he did not feel the torments, so ardent was his desire to possess Christ; St Ambrose, that the fire of divine love burned more fiercely within him than the coals without.

Saint Lawrence's last words

After he had suffered a long while, he turned to the judge with a cheerful smile and said: "Let my body be turned; one side is broiled enough." When they had turned him, he said: "It is cooked enough, you may eat." Then he prayed for the conversion of Rome, that the faith of Christ might spread from it through the whole world, and gave up his soul to God.

This holy mirth in the fire is the heart of his cult. It is not bravado: it is the freedom of a man who already belongs to another world. The Gospel of his Mass gives its secret: "Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24–25).

Was Saint Lawrence really killed on a gridiron?

Honesty requires us to add what Butler adds. Some modern scholars, such as Delehaye and Franchi de' Cavalieri, have doubted the gridiron and the scene of the treasures, suggesting that Lawrence, like Sixtus, was beheaded; others defend the tradition. What is certain is that St Ambrose, writing in the fourth century, little more than a hundred years after the event, and other early Fathers held that he was roasted to death, and that the Roman Church has sung it in his Office ever since. We hold the account as the Church's ancient tradition, with the reserve Butler himself observes.

The fruit of his martyrdom

Prudentius ascribes to his dying prayer the conversion of Rome: several senators who witnessed his death became Christians on the spot and carried his body on their shoulders to burial on the Via Tiburtina. "His death", says Prudentius, "was the death of idolatry in Rome." Constantine built a chapel over his tomb, the origin of the basilica of St Lawrence outside the Walls (San Lorenzo fuori le Mura), one of the patriarchal basilicas of Rome. Many miracles were wrought at his tomb, says St Augustine; St Gregory of Tours and Fortunatus relate others in Gaul. In the same book of martyrs Prudentius sang a Spanish deacon of the next generation, St Vincent of Saragossa, who was also laid on a gridiron, under Diocletian.

The feast of Saint Lawrence: 10 August

The feast of St Lawrence is kept on 10 August, the day of his death in 258. In the 1962 Missal it is a feast of the second class. It is one of the few feasts of a saint that keeps a vigil in the 1962 calendar, on 9 August, a sign of its antiquity and its rank; until 1955 it also had an octave. His name is said every day in the Canon of the Mass, in the Communicantes, after the Apostles and the martyr popes: "Xystus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus…", his bishop Sixtus and his deacon side by side; and he is invoked among the martyrs in the Litany of the Saints.

The collect of 10 August, from the Roman Missal, is drawn straight from his passion:

Da nobis, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: vitiorum nostrorum flammas exstinguere; qui beato Laurentio tribuisti tormentorum suorum incendia superare. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Grant us, we beseech Thee, almighty God, to quench the flames of our vices, who didst grant to blessed Lawrence to overcome the fires of his torments. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

And the collect of the vigil, on 9 August:

Adesto, Domine, supplicationibus nostris: et intercessione beati Laurentii Martyris tui, cuius praevenimus festivitatem; perpetuam nobis misericordiam benignus impende. Per Dominum nostrum.

Be attentive, O Lord, to our supplications: and through the intercession of blessed Lawrence Thy Martyr, whose festival we anticipate, graciously bestow on us Thy everlasting mercy. Through our Lord.

A prayer to Saint Lawrence

The collect above is the Church's own prayer to God through St Lawrence, and the best one: it asks him, who overcame the flames of the fire, to help us overcome the flames of our passions. For a longer devotion, the faithful make the St Lawrence novena, the nine days from 2 to 10 August, with a meditation for each day on his deaconship, the treasures of the Church, the three days, and the gridiron. Those who honour the martyrs of Rome often pray to him alongside St Cecilia, St Sebastian and St Agatha, all named in the Canon.

What is Saint Lawrence the patron saint of?

• Deacons, whose model he is, and all who serve the altar.
• The poor, and those who serve them, because of "the treasures of the Church".
• Cooks, bakers and roasters, by a holy joke the Christian people drew from his last words on the gridiron; and, from the same words, comedians.
• Librarians and archivists, as the keeper of the Church's goods and records.
• Those who suffer burns and those who fight fire, invoked against fire and against the fires of temptation.
• Rome, of which he is, with Sts Peter and Paul, a principal patron; and in Spain, Huesca and the monastery of the Escorial, which Philip II vowed to him after the victory of Saint-Quentin, won on his feast in 1557, and whose plan is said to recall the gridiron.

The St Lawrence medal usually shows him in a deacon's dalmatic, holding the palm of martyrdom and the gridiron, sometimes with a purse or a book of the Gospels. Blessed, it is a sacramental: a reminder of charity to the poor and of courage in trial.

The "tears of St Lawrence": the Perseids

Every year around 10 August, the night sky is crossed by the shooting stars of the Perseid meteor shower, at its height in the days around his feast. Catholic Europe gave them a name: the tears of St Lawrence (le lacrime di San Lorenzo in Italy, las lágrimas de San Lorenzo in Spain), or, in another reading, the sparks of his gridiron scattered across heaven. It is a piece of popular piety, not a doctrine; but it has kept the martyr's name in the mouths of generations who watched the August sky.

Other saints named Lawrence

Several saints and holy people bear the same name and are often confused with the martyr of Rome:

• St Lawrence of Brindisi (1559–1619), Capuchin friar, preacher, chaplain to the imperial army against the Turks, canonized in 1881 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1959.
• St Lawrence O'Toole (c. 1128–1180), Archbishop of Dublin and peacemaker, canonized in 1225, patron of Dublin.
• St Lorenzo Ruiz, the Filipino layman martyred at Nagasaki in 1637, beatified in 1981 and canonized in 1987, after the 1962 calendar, and so not found in it.
• Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (c. 1614–1691), the Carmelite lay brother whose sayings were gathered in The Practice of the Presence of God. He is not a canonized saint because no cause for his beatification has been brought to a conclusion; the Church has never pronounced on his holiness, though his little book is widely read.

For the other saints of the traditional calendar, month by month, see our guide to the Catholic saints.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Saint Lawrence?

The archdeacon of Pope St Sixtus II at Rome, in charge of the Church's goods and alms, martyred in August 258 under Valerian, four days after his Pope. He is one of the most venerated martyrs of the Roman Church and is named in the Canon of the Mass.

How did Saint Lawrence die?

According to the tradition received from St Ambrose and Prudentius, he was bound to an iron gridiron over a slow fire and roasted to death, joking with his torturers and praying for the conversion of Rome. Some modern scholars think he may have been beheaded; the Church's liturgy keeps the ancient account.

What were Saint Lawrence's last words?

"Let my body be turned; one side is broiled enough," and, once turned, "It is cooked enough, you may eat." He then prayed for the conversion of Rome and died.

When is the feast day of Saint Lawrence?

10 August, a feast of the second class in the 1962 calendar, preceded by a vigil on 9 August. His novena is made from 2 to 10 August.

When was Saint Lawrence born and canonized?

The year of his birth is unknown; he died in 258. He was never canonized by a formal decree, which began only in the Middle Ages: like all the early martyrs he was venerated as a saint from his death, with a public cult at his tomb from the fourth century.

What is Saint Lawrence the patron saint of?

Deacons, the poor, cooks, librarians and archivists, those who suffer burns, and the city of Rome, among others.

Why is Brother Lawrence not a saint?

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, author of The Practice of the Presence of God, is a different person, a seventeenth-century Carmelite lay brother. No cause for his beatification has been concluded, so he has not been declared blessed or saint; this says nothing against his holiness, only that the Church has not judged it.

The Iter Fidei app carries the 1962 calendar with the vigil and feast of St Lawrence, the propers of the Mass, and the prayers to the saints in Latin and English. Join early access here.

Sources. Butler's Lives of the Saints, 10 August (St Laurence, Martyr); St Ambrose, De Officiis I, 41; Prudentius, Peristephanon, hymn II; the Roman Missal of 1962, Mass and collects of the vigil (9 August) and feast (10 August) of St Lawrence; the Canon of the Mass (Communicantes); Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims version (2 Corinthians 9:6–10; John 12:24–26).