Lawrence was martyred at Rome on August 10, 258, four days after Pope Sixtus II and his deacons were seized and killed in the catacomb of Praetextatus during the persecution of Valerian. As archdeacon he had charge of the treasury of the Roman Church and of its poor. The Church has kept his feast on August 10 since the fourth century, and it ranks as a feast rather than a memorial — an honour given to few martyrs outside the apostles.
The tradition that Lawrence was ordered to produce the wealth of the Church and presented the poor of Rome instead is recorded by Ambrose in De Officiis, written within about 130 years of the martyrdom. So is the gridiron. Prudentius gave the scene its long afterlife in the Peristephanon at the end of the fourth century, and the gridiron became Lawrence's emblem in Western art. Ambrose also preserves the exchange in which Lawrence, refused permission to follow Sixtus to death, is told he will follow in three days.
He was buried on the Via Tiburtina, and Constantine raised the first basilica over the grave. San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, rebuilt and joined to a second church in the thirteenth century, is one of the seven pilgrim churches of Rome — the circuit Holy Year pilgrims walk in a single day. Lawrence's head is venerated in the Vatican, and the church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna marks the traditional site of his death. He is a patron saint of cooks, of deacons, and of the city of Rome.
