Par meritum, quicumque legis, cognosce duorum, He caused this inscription to be placed on the tomb of the martyr. Pope Saint Damasus I, who laboured to promote devotion to the martyrs, often writing epigraphs in their honour, dedicated one such poem to the child martyr, equating his resistance to deliver the Eucharist to pagans with the abnegation that Saint Stephen the Protomartyr displayed when the Jews brought him out to be stoned. However, celebrating his feast closer to 15 August is permitted, provided that it is assigned on an unimpeded day.
In the Vetus Ordo, therefore, ( click on the thumbnails below to open the files for his proper Mass and Office, as well as the chant our Choir set for the Mass propers), his feast is properly kept on 25 November, which is probably the date: either when his relics were transferred from the Catacombs of Saint Callixtus to the Basilica of San Sisto e Santa Cecilia, and thither reposed in the tomb of Pope Saint Zephyrinus or when Pope Saint Paul I transferred his relics, together with the relics of other martyrs, from the Basilica of San Sisto e Santa Cecilia to the Basilica of San Silvestro in Capite, where they remain today. As such, his feast is perpetually impeded. The Roman Martyrology lists Saint Tharsicius under 15 August, which is the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, having suffered martyrdom on this day in 257 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Valerian. Eastern hagiography, meanwhile, sometimes registers him a deacon, one of the major orders, which somehow agrees with the epigraph Pope Saint Damasus I wrote.
Western hagiography designates him an acolyte, one of the minor orders, based on a sixth-century legend about the martyrdom of Pope Saint Stephen I. That said, both East and West venerate Saint Tharsicius as a martyr. Tarcisius, martyr chrétien | Alexandre Falguière | 1868
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