Holy Martyrs Photius, Anicetus and Many with Them (+305)

The holy Martyrs Photius and Anicetus suffered in Nicomedia in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian (284–305). Saint Anicetus held the office of a military commander at the emperor’s court. He fearlessly denounced Diocletian for his lawlessness and the merciless slaughter of innocent Christians, for which the enraged autocrat had the blessed one cruelly tortured. Then he ordered the saint to be thrown to the beasts to be torn apart, but a lion came up to him meekly and began to fawn on him. Suddenly the earth shook violently, the temple of Hercules was shattered, and part of the city wall collapsed too, burying many pagans beneath it. The infuriated tormentor ordered the saint to be beheaded, but the executioner who raised his sword to carry out the order fell down dead. They began to torture the Lord’s chosen one on a wheel and to burn him over a slow fire, but the wheel stopped and the fire went out; Photius, the martyr’s kinsman, greeted the blessed one and called the pagan idols nothing. The sword raised against the new confessor pierced the executioner himself. The martyrs were thrown into prison. Diocletian urged them: “If you wish to receive honour and riches, bow down to our gods!” The lambs of Christ answered: “Thy honour and thy riches be with thee to thy perdition!” Then the saints were tied to untamed horses and dragged mercilessly through the streets, but God’s mercy kept them unharmed. By order of the God-hating ruler a huge furnace was prepared to burn the confessors of Christ. When the godless had heated it, many who hoped in the Saviour, encouraged by the example of Anicetus and Photius, went into it with the words: “We are Christians!” All of them commended their souls to the Lord in prayer. The fire could do no harm to the holy bodies of Anicetus and Photius. Many pagans who witnessed this miracle believed in the true God. This took place in 305.