The Martyr Apphianus

Maximin Caesar came to power at that time, and as if to show everyone the evidence of his revived hatred of God and of his impiety, he armed himself for persecution against us more fiercely than those before him. [a] As a result, no small confusion arose among everyone. People scattered this way and that, trying somehow to escape the danger, and there was great commotion everywhere. But what words could describe as they deserve the divine love and the boldness in confessing God of the blessed and truly innocent lamb, I mean the martyr Apphianus, who in the sight of all, before the gates of Caesarea, gave a wonderful example of godliness toward the one God? [b]

He was not yet twenty years old at the time. He had first spent a long time at Berytus for the sake of a worldly Greek education, since he belonged to a very wealthy family. It is a wonder to tell how, in such a city, he rose above youthful passions and held fast to virtue, corrupted neither by his bodily vigor nor by his young companions, living prudently, soberly and in godliness, as befitted his profession of the Christian teaching and the life of his teachers. [c] If we must also mention his native country, and honor it for producing this noble athlete of godliness, we will gladly do so. The young man came from Pagae, if anyone knows the place, a city of no small importance in Lycia. When he came back from his studies at Berytus, though his father held the first place in their country, he could not bear to live with him and his relatives, since they did not care to live by the rules of godliness. So, as if led by the divine Spirit, and following a natural, or rather an inspired and true, philosophy, he counted this better than what is thought to be the glory of life, and despising bodily comforts, he secretly left his family. In his faith and hope in God he gave no thought to his daily needs, and he was led by the divine Spirit to the city of Caesarea, where the crown of martyrdom for godliness had been prepared for him. [d] There he lived with us, studied the divine Scriptures with us diligently for a short time, and trained himself eagerly with fitting exercises. Then he made such an end as would astonish anyone, should it be seen again. Who, hearing of it, would not rightly admire his courage, his boldness and his constancy, and still more the daring deed itself, which showed a zeal for godliness and a spirit truly more than human?

In the second attack on us under Maximin, in the third year of the persecution, the tyrant’s edicts were issued for the first time, ordering the city magistrates to see to it, diligently and quickly, that all the people offered sacrifice. Throughout the city of Caesarea, by the governor’s command, heralds were summoning men, women and children to the temples of the idols; besides this, the tribunes were calling out each person by name from a register; and a huge crowd of the wicked was rushing together from every side. Then this young man, fearlessly, and without anyone knowing what he meant to do, slipped past both us who lived in the house with him and the whole band of soldiers around the governor, and rushed up to Urbanus as he was pouring a libation. Fearlessly he seized him by the right hand and at once stopped him from sacrificing; and skillfully and persuasively, with a kind of divine inspiration, he urged him to give up his error, because it was not right to forsake the one and only true God and sacrifice to idols and demons. [e] It seems likely that the young man did this through a divine power that led him on, and all but cried aloud through his deed that Christians who are truly Christians are so far from abandoning the worship of the God of the universe, once they have embraced it, that they not only rise above threats and the punishments that follow, but grow bolder still, speaking with a noble and unfettered tongue, and, if it were possible, summoning even their persecutors to turn from their ignorance and acknowledge the only true God.

At that, as might be expected after so bold a deed, the man of whom we speak was instantly torn by the governor and those around him as if by wild beasts. He bore countless blows all over his body with courage, and was at once thrown into prison. There the torturer stretched both his feet in the stocks for a night and a day, and the next day he was brought before the judge. When they tried to force him to give in, he showed every constancy under suffering and terrible tortures. His sides were torn, not once or twice but many times, down to the bones and the very bowels; and he took so many blows on his face and neck that those who had long known him well could not recognize his swollen face. But since he would not give way under this treatment, the torturers, as ordered, wrapped his feet in linen cloths soaked in oil and set them alight. No words can describe the agonies the blessed one endured from this. The fire ate away his flesh and reached his bones, so that the fluids of his body melted and oozed out and dripped down like wax. But he was not overcome even by this. His opponents, defeated and unable to understand his more-than-human constancy, threw him into prison again. A third time he was brought before the judge, and when he had borne witness to the same confession, half dead, he was at last thrown into the depths of the sea.

What happened immediately afterward will hardly be believed by those who did not see it. Though we realize this, we must still record the event, to which, to put it plainly, all the people of Caesarea were witnesses. Truly, there was no age that did not see this marvelous sight. For as soon as they had cast this truly holy and thrice-blessed youth into the bottomless depths of the sea, an extraordinary commotion and upheaval stirred the sea and the whole shore around it, so that the land and the whole city were shaken by it. And together with this wonderful and sudden upheaval, the sea threw up the body of the divine martyr before the gates of the city, as though it could not bear it. Such was the death of the wonderful Apphianus. It took place on the second day of the month Xanthicus, April 2 by the Roman reckoning, on the day of Preparation. [f]