Cessianus ( – 303) is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

saint In Christianity, Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of sanctification in Christianity, holiness, imitation of God, likeness, or closeness to God in Christianity, God. However, the use of the ...

and

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' Word stem, stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In ...

. At the age of eight, he was martyred during the

persecutions Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these term ...

of the Roman emperor

Diocletian Diocletian ( ; ; ; 242/245 – 311/312), nicknamed Jovius, was Roman emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. He was born Diocles to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia (Roman province), Dalmatia. As with other Illyri ...

in 303.

History

Pope Gregory XVI Pope Gregory XVI (; ; born Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari; 18 September 1765 – 1 June 1846) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 2 February 1831 to his death in June 1846. He had adopted the name Mauro upon enteri ...

presented

Bishop Mathias Loras Pierre-Jean-Mathias Loras (August 30, 1792 – February 19, 1858) was a French Catholic priest in the United States who served as the first Bishop of Dubuque, in what would become the state of Iowa. He was the first president of Spring Hill Coll ...

with the remains of Cessianus in 1838. Loras brought the remains with him to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The remains were placed within a

side altar A side-altar or bye-altar is an altar that is subordinate to the central or high altar in a church. The term is generally applied to altars situated in bays of the nave, transepts, etc. Side-altars may be recessed in a side-chapel, or simply bu ...

in the new St. Raphael's Cathedral, in

Dubuque, Iowa Dubuque (, ) is a city in Dubuque County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. The population was 59,667 at the 2020 United States census. The city lies along the Mississippi River at the junction of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, a region ...

. After the completion of renovations in the mid-1980s, it was decided to place the remains of Cessianus under the new, freestanding

main altar Main may refer to: Geography *Main River (disambiguation), multiple rivers with the same name *Ma'in, an ancient kingdom in modern-day Yemen * Main, Iran, a village in Fars Province *Spanish Main, the Caribbean coasts of mainland Spanish territ ...

.Craughwell, Thomas J., "Cessianus", ''Saints Preserved'', Crown Publishing Group, 2011
On November 23, 1986, the wooden box containing the remains of Cessianus was installed during

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

in the altar where they currently reside.

References

{{Authority control 295 births 303 deaths 3rd-century Romans 4th-century Christian martyrs 4th-century Romans Christian child saints Italian Roman Catholic saints Christians martyred during the reign of Diocletian