The Life
Lawrence (Laurentius) was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome under Pope Sixtus II and one of the most celebrated martyrs of the early Church. He was executed on August 10, 258 AD, during the persecution of the Emperor Valerian — three days after the Pope and the other six deacons had been beheaded. He died by being roasted alive on a gridiron, and his story has been remembered for seventeen centuries because of the combination of extraordinary courage and — if the tradition is accurate — extraordinary wit: after being placed on the gridiron and left to roast for some time, he is said to have told his torturers: Turn me over — I am done on this side.
The historical details of Lawrence's life are sparse but consistent. He was Spanish by birth, from Huesca in Aragon, and was brought to Rome by the future Pope Sixtus II when Sixtus was returning from his studies in Spain. He was made a deacon of the Roman church — one of seven, an office of immense practical importance, since the deacons were responsible for the material welfare of the poor and the administration of the church's charitable funds. When Valerian's persecution of the Church intensified in 258, Pope Sixtus II was arrested. As he was led to his execution, Lawrence followed, weeping. According to Ambrose, the Pope consoled him: You will follow me in three days.
Three days later, Lawrence was arrested. The Roman prefect demanded that he hand over the treasures of the Church — the Roman treasury was in difficulty, and the persecutors were motivated partly by the desire to seize Christian wealth. Lawrence asked for three days to assemble the treasures. He used the three days to distribute as much of the church's material wealth as possible to the poor, and then presented himself to the prefect with a crowd of Rome's poor, sick, and disabled: These are the treasures of the Church. The prefect, enraged, sentenced him to death by slow burning on a gridiron.
Lawrence's martyrdom had an extraordinary effect on Roman Christianity. Prudentius, writing in the late fourth century, says that Lawrence's death was the decisive moment in Rome's conversion from paganism: after Lawrence's martyrdom, the great Roman senatorial families began converting to Christianity in large numbers. His blood, Prudentius argues, put out the fires of the pagan temples. The Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura (St Lawrence Outside the Walls), built over his tomb by Constantine in the fourth century, became one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome. The Escorial palace-monastery in Spain, built by Philip II in the sixteenth century, was dedicated to St Lawrence and designed in the shape of a gridiron in his honour.
The Treasures of the Church
When the Roman prefect ordered Lawrence to hand over the treasures of the Church, Lawrence promised to produce them within three days. He used the three days not to gather gold and silver but to distribute it to the poor — deacons were responsible for the charitable funds, and Lawrence exercised that responsibility to the end. When the three days were up, he came to the prefect with Rome's poor, crippled, blind, and sick gathered behind him and said: These are the treasures of the Church. The story is told by Ambrose of Milan, who preached a series of sermons on Lawrence's martyrdom in the 380s, within living memory of those who had known people who had known Lawrence. It has the ring of historical memory rather than hagiographic invention. The prefect was not amused. He sentenced Lawrence to death on the gridiron. Lawrence had known this was coming. He gave away the treasure rather than surrender it to the state. And then he presented himself, with the poor behind him, as the visible proof of what the Church's wealth was for. The Gridiron and the Joke Roasting to death on a gridiron — being slowly burned from below — is an agonising form of execution. It takes time. And in that time, according to the tradition preserved by Ambrose, Prudentius, and every subsequent hagiographer, Lawrence said to his executioners: Turn me over — I am done on this side. The Latin: Assum est, inquit, versa et manduca — I am roasted. Turn me and eat. The joke has been remembered for seventeen centuries because it represents an extraordinary thing: a man who died in agony and refused, even in agony, to give his torturers the satisfaction of despair. The courage behind the joke is greater than the joke. He was on fire and making a cooking reference. He had already given away everything and come to die with nothing, because he had already given away everything to the right people. The gridiron could not touch that. The Escorial — a palace built in his shape Philip II of Spain, whose empire won the Battle of St Quentin on August 10, 1557 — the feast of St Lawrence — attributed the victory to Lawrence's intercession and vowed to build a church, monastery, palace, and royal mausoleum in his honour. The result was the Escorial: the vast granite complex in the Sierra de Guadarrama north of Madrid, completed in 1584, designed in the shape of a gridiron in honour of the saint's instrument of martyrdom. It is one of the largest and most austere royal residences in European history — a monument to the Hapsburg relationship with the Counter-Reformation and to one deacon's refusal to stop being funny on a fire.
Walk in Their Footsteps
Pilgrimage sites connected to St Lawrence
Ask St Lawrence to Intercede
Bring these intentions to this saint in prayer:
Lawrence was asked to hand over the treasure. He took three days, gave it all away to the poor, and then came back and said: Here are the treasures of the Church. He was right. He was also about to be burned to death for being right, and he knew it. The joke on the gridiron — turn me over, I'm done on this side — was not bravado. It was the natural expression of someone who had already finished the important thing: he had already given away everything to the right people. There was nothing left to take from him. When there is nothing left to take from you, what can they do?
“Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”
St Lawrence, deacon and martyr, keeper of the treasures — help me understand what the Church's real treasure is. Help me give it away to the right people. And if I am ever in the fire — any kind of fire — give me some fraction of your spirit: not the spirit that denies the pain, but the spirit that has already finished what mattered and can therefore face what comes with a kind of freedom. Amen.