Holy Martyrs Macedonios, Theodoulos and Tatian of Phrygia

Sts. Macedonios, Theodoulos and Tatian the Martyrs (Feast Day - September 12)

Verses

Macedonios and Tatian my Christ, With Theodoulos were beheaded on Your behalf.*

By Sozomen

(Ecclesiastical History, Bk. 5, Ch. 11)

[During the reign of Julian the Apostate, in 362,] Macedonios, Theodoulos and Tatian, who were Phrygians by birth, courageously endured martyrdom. A temple of Misos, a city of Phrygia, having been reopened by the governor of the province, after it had been closed many years, these martyrs entered therein by night, and destroyed the images. As other individuals were arrested, and were on the point of being punished for the deed, they avowed themselves the actors in the deed. They might have escaped all further punishment by offering sacrifices to idols; but the governor could not persuade them to accept acquittal on these terms. His persuasions being ineffectual, he maltreated them in a variety of forms, and finally extended them on a gridiron, beneath which a fire had been lighted. While they were being consumed, they said to the governor, Amachus (for that was his name), "if you desire cooked flesh, give orders that our bodies may be turned with the other side to the fire, in order that we may not seem, to your taste, half cooked." Thus did these men nobly endure and lay down their life amid the punishments.

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