Julian, Eunus, Besas and Macarius of Alexandria

The martyrdom belongs to the Decian persecution, the first empire-wide onslaught upon the Church, which fell on Alexandria about the year 250. Its memory is unusually secure, for it is recorded by Saint Dionysius the Great, Bishop of Alexandria, in a letter written within living memory of the events and transmitted in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea — a first-hand roll of the city's confessors.

Julian was an old man, so disabled by gout that he could neither stand nor walk, and was carried to the tribunal by two who bore him. Of these two, one denied the faith under fear; the other, Cronion, who was surnamed Eunus, stood firm with Julian. The two confessors, refusing to offer sacrifice, were set upon camels and scourged through the length of the city, high above the crowd, and at the last were burned in quicklime before the assembled Alexandrians, giving up their souls to God. As they suffered, a soldier named Besas, standing by among the guards, could not bear the insults the mob heaped upon the martyrs and rebuked the crowd. For this he was seized and led before the judge; confessing himself a Christian, "this excellent warrior of God," in Dionysius's phrase, was beheaded. And Macarius, a man of Libya, whom the judge could by no argument persuade to deny Christ, was burned alive.

These stand together in the synaxarion as the martyrs of Alexandria under Decius — the crippled old man and his steadfast bearer, the soldier who would not see the saints mocked, and the Libyan who chose the fire — and the Church keeps their memory on February 27. (The same letter of Dionysius names other Alexandrian martyrs of the persecution — Epimachus and Alexander, the women Ammonarion, Mercuria, Dionysia, and others — some of whom the calendars commemorate on other days; the four kept together here are those the February 27 synaxarion joins.)