Bademus of Persia

Bademus came of a rich and noble family of Beth-Lapat (Bēth Lapaṭ, Gundeshapur) in Persia. Turning from the wealth and honour of his house, he distributed his goods to the poor, and near the city built a monastery, where he gathered disciples and lived as their abbot in strict asceticism — fasting, vigil and unceasing prayer — while also teaching and confirming the Christians of the region in the faith.

In the great forty-year persecution of the Church of Persia under Shapur II, Bademus was arrested together with seven of his monks, and cast into prison. For four months he was brought out daily and cruelly beaten, and daily returned to his cell, always answering his tormentors with steadfast confession and encouraging his disciples. There was in the same prison a Christian nobleman named Nersan, who under fear of torture had agreed to deny Christ; and the persecutors, to bind his apostasy the tighter and to defile a holy man by his hand, offered Nersan his freedom and his estates if he would himself strike off the head of Bademus.

Nersan took the sword. But his hand trembled, and his conscience so shook him that he could not deal a clean blow; again and again he struck, hacking cruelly, while Bademus stood unmoved, praying and forgiving, until at last the abbot's head was severed. So Bademus completed his martyrdom about 376. Nersan gained nothing by his crime: the tradition relates that, tormented by remorse and abandoned even by those he had sought to please, he came soon after to a wretched end — a warning of the ruin of him who denies his Lord. The bodies of Bademus and, later, of his disciples were recovered by the Christians, and his memory was kept among the martyrs of Persia.