Wednesday, November 6, 2019

SAINT VICTORINUS AND COMPANIONS

St. Victorinus
Victorinus and Companions
Feast day: February 25
Death: 284
Martyr with companions.A citizen of Corinth, Greece, he was exiled with a group of fellow Christians to Egypt during the persecutions under Emperor Numerian. Victor and the others had been exiled in 249 and lived in Egypt. Under Governor Sabinus they were arrested again, brutally tortured, and finally executed at Diospolis.


 Victorinus, Victor, Nicephorus, Claudian, Dioscorus, Serapion and Papias were Corinthian who were exiled to Egypt after confessing their faith before the Proconsul Tertius. They were martyred at Diospolis in the Thebaid during the reign of Decius /Numerian, under the governor Sabinus, for their Christian faith. After various tortures, Victorinus was thrown into a great mortar according to the Greeks, of marble. Then the executioners began by pounding his feet and legs, saying to him at every stroke: "Spare yourself, wretch. It depends upon you to escape this death, if you will only renounce your new God." The prefect grew furious at his constancy, and at length commanded his head to be beat to pieces. The sight of the atrocities committed against Victorinus heightened the fervor of his fellows, rather than tempering it as the governor had intended.

When the tyrant threatened Victor with the same death as Victorinus, he only desired him to hasten the execution; and, pointing to the mortar, said: "In that is salvation and true felicity prepared for me!" He was immediately cast into it and beaten to death. Nicephorus, the third martyr, was impatient of delay, and leaped of his own accord into the bloody mortar. The judge, enraged at his boldness, commanded not one, but many executioners at once to pound him in the same manner. He caused Claudian, the fourth, to be chopped in pieces, and his bleeding joints to be thrown at the feet of those that were yet living. He expired after his feet, hands, arms, legs, and thighs were cut off.

No comments:

Post a Comment