Глава VII. О деве Феодосии и мучениках Домнине и Авксентие

When the persecution had already entered the fifth year, on the second day of the month of Xanthica, or four days before the April Nonnes, on the very day of the resurrection of our Savior, also in Caesarea, one Tyrian woman, the faithful and venerable virgin Theodosia, who was not yet fully eighteen years old, approached some of the prisoners who were sitting before the judgment seat for confessing the kingdom of Christ, with the intention of taking part in their wisdom and, probably, also ask that, when they come to the Lord, they remember her. Having done this and as if having done something vicious and wicked, she was captured by the soldiers and brought to the prefect. The prefect, a frantic man, with a brutal feeling, tortured her with severe and terrible tortures, tormented her sides and breasts to the very bones and, still breathing, even despite all the torment, standing cheerfully and with a bright face, ordered her to be thrown into the sea waves. He then passed from her to other confessors and sent them all to the Fenian copper mines of Palestine. And on the fifth day of the month Diya, in Roman style, the November Nonnes, the aforementioned prefect of the same city condemned the Christians who surrounded the confessor Silvanus and showed noble firmness in the matter of piety to work in the same mines, ordering first to weaken the joints of their legs with a hot iron. Silvanus was then still a presbyter, but soon after that he was awarded the episcopate and received a martyr’s death. Along with the sentence that was pronounced on these martyrs, the prefect also decided to burn the husband, who was famous for countless other confessions. It was Domnin, who, due to his extreme freedom of speech, was very well known to all the inhabitants of Palestine. After this, the same judge, a terrible inventor of evils and the introducer of new deceits against the teachings of Christ, came up with hitherto unheard-of executions for the worshipers of God. He sentenced three to fight with their fists; he handed over the venerable and holy presbyter Auxentius to be devoured by wild beasts; some who had already reached the age of perfect husbands were castrated and sentenced to exile in the same mines; and others, after severe torture, he imprisoned. Among the latter was Pamphilus, the most desirable man of all for me and among our martyrs, in all kinds of virtue, the strongest. Urban first tested him in the art of eloquence and philosophical sciences, then forced him to make a sacrifice; but seeing that he did not agree to this and that his threats meant nothing, he became extremely furious and ordered that he be tormented with the most severe tortures. Severing the martyr’s sides with hard and unbearable claws, this brutal man almost devoured his flesh, and yet, ashamed of all his efforts, he finally included him in the list of confessors in prison. For his cruelty towards the saints, for his fury towards the martyrs of Christ, what kind of retribution he will have to receive from the judgment of God is easy to guess from the very beginning of his execution here on earth. Unexpectedly and soon after what he had done with Pamphilus, that is, when he was still a prefect, the judgment of God befell him as follows: Who just yesterday judged from the heights of the throne and was surrounded by a military detachment of bodyguards, who ruled the peoples of the whole of Palestine and was among the comrades, closest friends and interlocutors of the tyrant himself; he exposed and deprived him of all these advantages in one night, covered him with dishonor and shame in front of the people who had previously revered him as their leader, showed him to all the people ruled by him as fearful, cowardly, resorting to effeminate cries and petitions, and in Caesarea itself he subjected him to an inexorable and cruel trial - namely Maximinus, whom he had previously boasted and was proud of as a man, for oppressing us especially him who loved him, and who, after many reproaches for his crimes discovered, pronounced a death sentence on him. However, we mentioned this in passing. Perhaps a more convenient opportunity will present itself to give space to the narration of the death and demise of both those godless people who especially rebelled against us, and Maximin himself and his entourage. You might be interested in: