Theodosia, Domninus and Pamphilus

Again at Caesarea, when the persecution had gone on into its fifth year, on the second day of the month Xanthicus, April 2 by the Roman reckoning, on the very Lord’s day of our Savior’s resurrection, Theodosia, a virgin from Tyre, a faithful and serious girl not yet eighteen years old, went up to some prisoners who were confessing the kingdom of Christ as they sat before the judgment seat. She greeted them and, it seems, asked them to remember her when they came before the Lord. [a] At that, as if she had done something profane and impious, the soldiers seized her and brought her to the governor. At once, raging like a madman and a wild beast, he had her tortured with dreadful and most terrible torments in her sides and breasts, down to the very bones. And while she was still breathing, and standing all the while with a joyful and shining face, he ordered her thrown into the waves of the sea. Then, turning from her to the other confessors, he condemned them all to the copper mines at Phaeno in Palestine. [b]

After this, on the fifth day of the month Dius, the Nones of November by the Roman reckoning, in the same city, Silvanus and those with him were condemned by the governor to labor in the same copper mines, after first being ordered to have their ankles crippled with hot irons. Silvanus was at that time a presbyter and confessor, and soon after was honored with the office of bishop and died a martyr; and those with him were men who had shown the noblest firmness for godliness. [c] At the same time he handed over to the flames a man famous for many other confessions. This was Domninus, well known to everyone in Palestine for his great boldness. After this the same judge, a cruel contriver of suffering and an inventor of schemes against the teaching of Christ, devised punishments against the godly never heard of before. He condemned three men to single combat as boxers. He gave Auxentius, a grave and holy old man, to be devoured by wild beasts. Others, in the prime of life, he made eunuchs and condemned to the same mines. Still others, after severe tortures, he threw into prison. Among these was my dearest friend Pamphilus, the most illustrious of the martyrs of our time for every kind of virtue. [d]

Urbanus first tested his learning in rhetoric and philosophy, and afterward tried to compel him to sacrifice. But when he saw that he refused and paid no attention at all to his threats, he grew furious and ordered him to be tormented with the most severe tortures. And when the brute had all but glutted himself on these tortures, with continuous, long-drawn-out scrapings of his sides, and yet had only covered himself with shame before everyone, he put him too in prison with the confessors.

But what reward for his cruelty to the saints the man who so abused the martyrs of Christ will receive from the divine judgment can easily be judged from its preludes. For immediately, not long after his daring cruelties against Pamphilus, while he still held the government, the divine judgment fell on him. Suddenly the man who only yesterday was judging from his lofty tribunal, guarded by a band of soldiers and ruling the whole nation of Palestine, the companion, dearest friend and table guest of the tyrant himself, was stripped of everything in a single night, and covered with disgrace and shame before those who had once admired him as if he were an emperor himself. He showed himself cowardly and unmanly, crying out like a woman and pleading with all the people he had ruled. And Maximin himself, on whose favor Urbanus had once relied in his arrogant insolence, as if Maximin loved him dearly for his deeds against us, sat as a harsh and most severe judge in this same Caesarea and pronounced the sentence of death against him, because of the great disgrace of the crimes of which he was convicted. Let this be said in passing. A fitting time may come when we have leisure to tell the end and the fate of those impious men who fought hardest against us, both of Maximin himself and of those with him. [f]