Martyrs venerated at Capua and elsewhere in southern Italy
The Holy Martyrs Quintius, Arcontius, and Donatus of Capua
Quintius, Arcontius, and Donatus are three early martyrs venerated at Capua and in other places in the south of Italy, where their cult was long established. They are commemorated together on September 5. Beyond their names and the city associated with their veneration, almost nothing of their lives or the circumstances of their martyrdom survives, and the date of their deaths is unknown.
The three are counted among the pre-schism Western saints honoured in the Orthodox calendar. Their names appear in the Roman tradition associated with Capua in Campania, but no narrative of their passion is extant; the sources record only that they were martyred and that they came to be venerated together in the region. The accepted English forms of their names are Quintius (Quintus), Arcontius (Arcontus), and Donatus.
Because the record is so sparse, scholarship treats the group as a commemoration preserved chiefly through martyrological notice rather than through any surviving account of their lives. A scholarly entry drawn from the Weissenburg manuscript of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (the Hieronymian Martyrology) places the commemoration of Quintus, Arcontus, and Donatus at Capua in Campania. The same scholarship notes that Donatus remains unidentified and that Arcontus may possibly be the same figure as a martyr named *Acontus venerated at Portus, though that identification is uncertain.
The cult of the three martyrs was centred on Capua and spread to other places in southern Italy. Their joint feast on September 5 preserves their memory within the calendar of the pre-schism Western Church, and they are included among the Orthodox saints of the pre-schism See of Rome commemorated on that day.