Galacteon and Episteme

Origins and early life

The saints belong to the Christian communities of third-century Syria, and their story is transmitted as a continuous family narrative. Galacteon was the son of a wealthy and distinguished couple of Emesa (the modern Homs), Kletophon and Leukippe, who had long been childless. According to the received Life, an aged monk-priest named Onuphrius, concealing his priesthood beneath a beggar's rags and going from house to house to preach Christ where he could, came to Leukippe's door; sensing her grief, he told her of the one true God who answers the prayer of those who turn to him in faith. Leukippe believed, received baptism, and was afterward granted a child — Galacteon — whom she and her now-converted husband raised in the Christian faith and gave a fine education.

Drawn from youth toward a life of solitude and prayer, Galacteon nevertheless did not resist when his father, on his coming of age, arranged his marriage to Episteme, a beautiful and well-born girl of the city who was still a pagan.

Marriage and ascetic struggle

The wedding, the tradition relates, was postponed for a season by the providence of God, and in the interval Galacteon gradually opened his faith to his betrothed. He won her to Christ and himself baptized her in secret, together with one of her servants, Eutolmius. The couple then resolved — this is the heart of their veneration — to keep their marriage in continence and to give themselves wholly to the monastic life. Leaving Emesa, they went up to Mount Publion, where two communities stood, one of men and one of women; Galacteon entered the former and Episteme the latter. Because the inhabitants of both houses were aged and infirm, the young couple took on the heavy labour of the settlements, and for several years they lived in work, fasting, and prayer. During this time Episteme saw in a dream that she and Galacteon stood in a radiant palace before a King who set golden crowns upon them — a vision the hagiographers read as a prefiguring of the martyrdom to come.

Martyrdom

The persecution of Christians in Syria, pressed by the governor Secundus — a man whom the Life remembers for parading the instruments of torture in the streets of Emesa to terrify the faithful — at length reached the mountain. A detachment of soldiers was sent against the monasteries. The monks and nuns escaped into the hills, but Galacteon would not flee; he remained in his cell reading the Scriptures and was taken and led away in chains. Seeing him carried off, Episteme implored the abbess to let her follow, that she might suffer for Christ together with the husband who had been her teacher in the faith; the abbess, weeping, blessed her to go. The two were tortured together — the account has their hands and feet struck off and their tongues cut out — and were at last beheaded, glorifying Christ to the end. Their servant Eutolmius is remembered as the witness who buried them and preserved their story.