Martyrs

ON THE HOLY MARTYRS, GREAT IN NUMBER,

AT ALEXANDRIA AND IN THE REST OF EGYPT.

From the Roman Martyrology.

Under Decius.

Many holy Martyrs at Alexandria and in the rest of Egypt (SS.)

J. B. S.

Most well known to the learned is the incomparable letter of St. Dionysius of Alexandria to Fabius of Antioch, reviewed by Eusebius in book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapters 41 and 42, in which he vividly describes the most savage butchery carried on both before and after the edicts of Decius at Alexandria and in the rest of Egypt, when indeed almost innumerable Christians of every age and sex were destroyed with torments especially various and unheard of. Not a few of these glorious champions, expressed by name in the sacred Calendars from the praised letter, have found their place elsewhere, especially in the month of December, in which they are reported on the XII, XIV, XIX, and XXII, and others in other months. Further, in the Acts, Metras or Metranus, an old man, the standard-bearer of the rest,

on the XXXI of January, Cointa or Quinta on the VIII of February, Apollonia on the IX, Julianus and Eunus on the XXVII, have been illustrated, so that here the memory only of the anonymous ones, destroyed while that madness raged, may be recalled, not to be set forth at length, since that most celebrated history has already been exhibited and explained in more than one place in our work. The announcement of the praised Martyrology is this: At Alexandria, the commemoration of the holy Martyrs, who in the persecution of Valerian, under the governor Æmilianus, being tortured for a long while with divers and exquisite torments, obtained the crown of martyrdom by various kinds of death.