St. Genesius, Scoffer

[Died c. 300] FEAST DAY: August 25

Well into the twentieth century actors were regarded as immoral riffraff: it is a prejudice that goes back to ancient Rome. The Greeks respected actors as artists, but the Romans had nothing but contempt for stage performers. That most actors were prisoners captured in war, or slaves, or at least foreigners only confirmed the Romans in their negative opinion. Under Roman law actors were not permitted to vote and barred from joining the army. Since everyone believed they were bad, many actors took the easy way and behaved badly.

Under the emperors the classic Greek and Roman comedies and tragedies always found an audience, but perhaps the most popular form of entertainment in the theaters was mime. Most mime plays were bawdy stories of unfaithful wives and husbands, acted out with plenty of lewd gestures. There was another reason why mime was popular: unlike the standard theater fare in which men played all the parts, mime featured both actors and actresses. Invariably at some point in the mime the actresses would appear on stage naked.

During the first century of the Christian era, producers of mime concocted a new way to draw a crowd by introducing into the performances actual executions. In the final scene of a play called Laureolus the actor who had been cast as the title character was replaced by a condemned criminal who was tortured to death, onstage, in full view of the excited audience. The same refinement was introduced in the mimed account of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the gods and was punished by being fettered to a rock. At the end of the play a condemned man dressed as Prometheus was dragged out from the wings and nailed, hand and foot, to a piece of stage scenery.

Genesius was a comic actor during the reign of Diocletian, the emperor who was intent upon eliminating the Christians from the empire once and for all. When Genesius’s theatrical troupe was commanded to perform before Diocletian, they decided to prepare a play that would be topical: they wrote a new farce that mocked the Christian sacrament of baptism.

Genesius was cast as the convert to be baptized. But at the climactic moment, as the water was poured over his head and the actor playing the priest spoke the words of the baptismal rite, something remarkable happened. Divine grace flowed over Genesius just as if his baptism had been authentic. He scrapped the sacrilegious lines he was supposed to recite, and instead looked Diocletian in the eye as he ad-libbed a speech denouncing the emperor for his cruelty to the Christians.

At first Diocletian thought the speech was only a bold joke, in keeping with the parody. But as Genesius continued to defend the Christians and condemn the persecution, Diocletian understood that the brazen actor was castigating him in public, in front of his own guests. The emperor stopped the performance, ordered Genesius arrested, and condemned him to be tortured to death.

Genesius was probably hauled off to prison and tortured there. But given the Romans’ tolerance of gruesome spectacles onstage, it’s possible that he met his death in front of an appreciative if sadistic audience, either in an arena or one of Rome’s theaters.

The executioners tore Genesius’s sides with iron hooks and burned him with torches, all the while urging him to deny he was a Christian and save his life. But Genesius, perhaps as astonished as anyone by his conversion, remained firm. “Were I to be killed a thousand times for my allegiance to Christ,” he said, “I would still go on as I have begun.” Death was a long time coming to Genesius, yet in his agony he repented of “sneering at the Holy Name in holy men, and coming so late to worship the true king.”

St. Genesius is the patron saint of actors, and devotion to him is strong in the theatrical community. One example: in St. Malachy’s Church, the parish in New York City’s Broadway theater district, there is a side chapel dedicated to the martyred actor.

St. Genesius’s relics are enshrined in the Church of Santa Susanna, the parish of the American community in Rome.