Abramius of Arbela
The Holy Hieromartyr Abramius, Bishop of Arbela
Hieromartyr · Bishop · d. c. 345, in Persia (Adiabene)
Commemorated 4 February — Martyrdom in Persia under Shapur II; within the afterfeast of the Meeting
Abramius (Abraham) of Arbela was a bishop in the Persian province of Adiabene, around the city of Arbela (modern Erbil), and a martyr of the great persecution of Christians under the Sasanian king Shapur II in the mid-fourth century. Commanded to abandon Christ and to worship the sun, he answered that it was folly to forsake the Creator and adore a creature; steadfast under torture, he was put to death for the confession of the faith about the year 345. He belongs to the vast company of the Persian martyrs whose sufferings under Shapur are recorded in the Syriac Acts, and he is honoured in the Byzantine calendar on February 4, within the afterfeast of the Meeting.
The persecution under Shapur II
From about the year 339 the Christians of the Persian Empire endured, under the Sasanian king Shapur II (309–379), a persecution of exceptional length and severity — the harshest the early Church suffered outside the Roman world. War between Persia and the now-Christian Roman Empire had made the Christians of Persia suspect as a foreign party; heavy taxes, then the demand to worship the sun and the fire of the Zoroastrian cult, then death, fell upon bishops, clergy, monastics, and laity in their thousands. Their Acts, preserved in Syriac, are among the treasures of the martyr-literature of the East, and the Byzantine calendar keeps the memory of many of them.
Bishop and martyr of Arbela
Abramius was bishop of the region of Arbela (Arbil, in Adiabene, the Christian heartland of northern Mesopotamia). Seized in the persecution, he was brought before the authorities and ordered, on pain of death, to renounce Christ and to worship the sun. He refused, answering — in the words the tradition preserves — that it was a foolish and impious thing to abandon the Creator of all and to bow instead before one of his creatures, a mere lamp set in the sky for the service of men. Neither threats nor torments moved him; and, persevering in his confession, he was put to death for the name of Christ, about the year 345, sealing with his blood the faith he had shepherded. He is numbered among the hieromartyrs — the martyred bishops — of the Persian Church.
Feast and commemoration
Abramius is kept on February 4 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 17), within the afterfeast of the Meeting, together with Isidore of Pelusium, who leads the day, and Nicholas the Studite. The Greek Menaion names him "Abraham, hieromartyr, bishop of Arbela in Persia"; the Slavic calendars keep him as Abramius. He is one of several Persian martyrs of the Shapur persecution honoured in the Byzantine year, and is to be distinguished from the other saints named Abraham or Abramius of the calendar — among them Abraham the Recluse (October 29) and the patriarch Abraham the Forefather.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
O God of our fathers, who ever dealest with us according to thy gentleness: take not thy mercy from us, but through the prayers of thy hieromartyr Abramius direct our lives in peace.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Abramius is depicted as a bishop-martyr: vested in the phelonion and omophorion, with the Gospel-book, in the settled type of a hierarch; in the Menologion miniature he is shown in the moment of his suffering.
The stored image is the miniature for February 4 from the Menologion of Basil II (Constantinople, c. 985; Vatican, Vat. gr. 1613), depicting the martyrdom of Abraham (Abramius) of Arbela (source, public domain, pd-old-work).