The Holy Martyrs Theodore, Ammianus, Julian, Oceanus and Centurionus of Nicomedia
Life
Theodore, Ammianus, Julian, Oceanus and Centurionus were a group of five martyrs who suffered at Nicomedia in Asia Minor during the persecution of Christians under the emperor Maximian, in the late third century. They are commemorated together in the Orthodox Church on September 4. The synaxarion preserves their names in several transliterated forms, the martyr Ammianus also appearing as Mianus and Oceanus as Kion.
By tradition the five came from a village near Nicomedia, recorded in the synaxarion as Quandababa. Arrested for confessing the Christian faith, they were subjected to torture and put to death. The account relates that their feet were cut off and that, after their execution, their bodies were cast into the fire.
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Martyrdom
The synaxarion relates that the persecutors first tore the martyrs' bodies with sharp iron hooks. They were then shut into a heated and flooded bath-house, the doors locked and sealed with the imperial signet so that they could not escape; by tradition an angel of the Lord delivered them from this confinement. Soldiers recaptured the saints and led them outside the city for execution. At their own request they were granted time for prayer before they surrendered their souls, after which their bodies were dismembered and thrown into a fire.
Nicomedia, the chief residence of the emperor Diocletian, was a center of severe persecution at the turn of the fourth century, and Orthodox tradition commemorates a great number of martyrs who suffered there, including the company remembered as the Twenty Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia. These five belong to that wider body of Nicomedian witnesses.
