Holy Martyr Theotecnus (III–IV)

The holy Martyr Theotecnus was a military commander in the time of the Emperor Maximian Galerius (305–311). Once the emperor came to Antioch, where the Lord’s chosen one was serving, and demanded that all the inhabitants of the city offer sacrifice to the pagan gods. The Christian Theotecnus refused to carry out the order. Then the lawless autocrat, who scorned the faith of the Saviour, dressed the valiant knight in women’s clothes and set him to spin thread with the maidservants. Three weeks later Maximian summoned the martyr, hoping that his spirit would by now have been broken by humiliation, but the blessed one answered him with a courageous confession of Christ. The enraged Maximian ordered the saint to be tortured and then thrown into a cauldron of boiling pitch; but as soon as Theotecnus was thrown into the cauldron, the fire lit beneath it went out and the pitch grew cold. The emperor was terrified and dared not continue the torture; he sent the martyr to prison and ordered his centurion to deal with the blessed one.

In the prison together with Theotecnus was a Christian confessor, Alexandra. The saint helped her escape from the prison. When the centurion learned of this, he tortured the martyr brutally, and at last threw him into the sea with a stone tied to his neck. Some time later Christians found the holy relics of the man well-pleasing to the Lord in the seaside city of Rhosus (Cilicia) and committed them to the earth with honour.