Many Kinds of Suffering

Why should I now recall the rest by name, or count the multitude of the men, or paint the many kinds of torment the wonderful martyrs suffered? Some were killed with axes, as happened to those in Arabia. Some had their legs broken, as befell those in Cappadocia. Some were hung up high by the feet, head downward, over a slow fire, and choked by the smoke rising from the burning wood, as was done to those in Mesopotamia. Some had their noses, ears and hands cut off and the other limbs and parts of their bodies hacked to pieces, as happened at Alexandria. [a] Why rekindle the memory of those in Antioch who were roasted on grates, not to kill them but to prolong their punishment, and of others who thrust their right hand into the fire sooner than touch the polluted sacrifice? Some of them, fleeing the trial, threw themselves down from high houses before they could be caught and fall into the hands of those plotting against them, counting death a prize snatched from the wickedness of the godless. [c]

There was a woman at Antioch, holy and admirable in the virtue of her soul, a woman in body, who was renowned among everyone there for wealth, family and good name. She had brought up her two daughters, virgins in the full bloom of youth, in the ordinances of godliness. Since great envy was stirred up over them, every means was used to track them down in their hiding place. Then, when it was learned that they were staying abroad, they were summoned by design to Antioch, and so they were caught in the soldiers’ nets. Seeing herself and her daughters helpless, and thinking over the dreadful things that men would do to them, and the most unbearable of all those dreadful things, the threat of sexual violation, she urged herself and the girls not to endure even to hear of it with the tip of an ear. To hand over their souls to the slavery of demons, she said, was worse than any death or destruction, and she put it to them that the one deliverance from all of it was to take refuge with the Lord. [d] Agreeing together in their resolve, they wrapped their bodies decently in their cloaks, and when they were in the middle of the road they begged the guards for a few moments to step aside, and hurled themselves into a river that flowed past. These, then, did it themselves. But there were two other virgins in that same city of Antioch, godly in every way and true sisters, of famous family and brilliant life, young in years and lovely, dignified in soul, devout in their ways, wonderful in their zeal. As though the earth could not bear to carry such as these, the servants of the demons ordered them to be thrown into the sea. [f]

So much for these. In Pontus others suffered things horrible to hear: their fingers were pierced with sharp reeds driven in under the tips of the nails; others had molten lead, bubbling and red-hot, poured down their backs, and were roasted in the most vital parts of the body. Others suffered in their private parts and their bowels shameful, pitiless torments not fit to be spoken of. These the noble, law-abiding judges devised with great eagerness to show off their cleverness, as if it were some excellence of wisdom, always vying to outdo one another with newer and newer tortures, as if for prizes in a contest.

But the last of these calamities came when at length they had worn themselves out with the excess of their evils, grew weary of killing, and had had their fill and more of shedding blood. Then they turned to what they themselves considered kindness and humanity, so that they seemed no longer to be devising anything terrible against us. For it was not fitting, they said, to pollute the cities with the blood of their own people, or to bring the supreme government of the rulers, which was kind and gentle toward everyone, into ill repute for cruelty. Rather the beneficence of the humane imperial authority ought to reach out to all, and we were no longer to be punished with death, since that punishment of us had been abolished through the humanity of the rulers. Then orders were given for our eyes to be gouged out and for one of our two legs to be maimed. This was their humanity, the lightest of their punishments for us. So, thanks to this humanity of the godless, it is no longer possible to tell the number, past all reckoning, of those who first had their right eyes cut out with the sword and then seared with fire, or had their left feet disabled by burning the joints with hot irons, and after that were condemned to the copper mines of the province, not so much for the labor as for the misery and hardship of it; besides all those who fell into other trials of other kinds, which cannot even be listed, for their brave deeds pass all telling. [g] In these struggles the magnificent martyrs of Christ shone out over the whole world and, as was right, amazed everyone everywhere who witnessed their courage; and through themselves they set forth plain proofs of the truly divine and unspeakable power of our Savior. To mention each of them by name would be a long task, not to say an impossible one.