The Torture and Death of St. Cyprian and St. Justina

This Guide to the Underworld offers the first English translation of a late-Medieval Latin account of the martyrdom of St. Cyprian and St. Justina of Antioch, the basis of which is an anonymous Latin text found in a manuscript dating from 1485, and composed in Rouen in the region of Normandy. Here the focus on Justina seems to reflect that she had already acquired a kind of quasi-mythical status, as a type of Platonic ‘familiar spirit’ to Cyprian, by the time the document was written. Also included in this volume is an abridged translation of a curious narration of the theft of the body of St. Justina by the Antipope John XVI, and his subsequent gifting of this holy relic to the Cathedral at Piacenza.