The fruit of the blood of the Alexandrian Martyrs

On February 28, there are nine individuals or groups listed in the Martyrologium Romanum, the Catholic Church’s official calendar of saints and blesseds. One of those entries is for an almost forgotten group of martyrs from Alexandria, Egypt. We know very little about these martyrs—not even how many died—but there are good reasons to remember them all the same.

After all, the city of Alexandria was one of the most influential cities in the ancient world. The Catholic faith spread quickly from Jerusalem to Rome in the first few centuries of the Church, but it also spread to Alexandria.

From the year 64 when the Roman emperor Nero declared Christians to be traitors to the empire, up to the year 313 when the Roman emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be legally permitted, persecution of Catholics was sporadic but often severe. It’s not surprising that Alexandria, which had a strong Catholic community, would have its share of martyrs.

There are certainly many individual Egyptian martyrs who made it into the Church’s calendar of saints. Saint Apollonia, for example, was a leader among Catholics of Alexandria, as well as a consecrated virgin. When an angry mob went looking for Christians to beat up around the year 250, they first went looking for her. She refused to name other Christians even when they tortured her by knocking out her teeth. She famously jumped into the fire that they had prepared for their victims, sacrificing herself rather than betraying others.

The Roman emperor Decius had unleashed a brutal persecution throughout the empire at about this time, and many Egyptian Christians died in this year. On June 1, the Church commemorates six soldiers of the modern city of Asyut who chose death rather than apostasy; on July 28, we remember a group of unnamed men and women who died in the Thebaid desert region; December 12 commemorates the date that a large group of women (presumably mostly consecrated virgins, plus a few men) were executed in Alexandria. On December 22, the Church remembers Bishop Saint Chaeremon of Nilopolis who was condemned with along many other Christians, but they were sentenced to a different fate. They were abandoned to the brutal Egyptian desert, where it is presumed that all died of exposure, hunger, or murder at the hands of wild animals or bandits. All in all, the year 250 was a painful one for Egyptian Catholics.

But that was not the only dangerous year for Christians in Egypt. Similar groups of Egyptian martyrs are still remembered in the Church’s calendar from the years 202, 249, 257, 305-311, 339, 356, 392,¹ along with several other groups whose dates of death can only be rounded to the nearest century.

But the point in bringing up these examples is not to revel in gruesome violence against Christians. Instead, these martyrs direct our attention to a particular group of men and women who died around the year 262 in Alexandria and who are remembered on February 28.

According to tradition, Alexandria experienced some sort of epidemic at about that time. We obviously don’t have a medical diagnosis of the condition that sickened many residents of one of the largest cities of the ancient world. But we do know what the Catholics of Alexandria did.

They cared for the sick. In a time when hospitals didn’t exist (because we Catholics hadn’t invented them yet), the most common human response to an outbreak of sickness was to run away from the city or hide from anyone who might be sick. Instead, the Catholics of Alexandria—without any special training or modern medical protection—imitated their Lord. After all, Christ Himself healed the sick and taught us that we must love our neighbors, particularly when they are suffering.

When the epidemic ended, the pagans of Alexandria remembered those who had shown themselves to be members of the illegal Catholic religion—and executed them. We don’t know how many died or even their names. We know only that the group included priests, deacons, and laymen.

Why were Catholics persecuted in the year 262? The Roman emperor Decius had died, and Roman emperor Gallienus ruled over Egypt instead. Today, Gallienus is not particularly remembered for persecuting Christians, unlike Decius, so perhaps the persecution of Christians in Alexandria was instigated by local leaders instead of Rome. Perhaps the Christians were considered a convenient scapegoat by the factions controlling the city during a time of known civil unrest.

What are the lessons of the Alexandrian martyrs for us today? One lesson is that their deaths prove that oft-quoted adage of the ecclesiastical writer Tertullian: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. The blood of Egyptian martyrs brought forth a veritable garden of saints. These non-martyr saints include famous monastic saints such as Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Pachomius the Great, and Paul the Hermit. The Egyptian Church also produced female hermit saints such as Syncletica and Euphrasia. Multiple bishops of Alexandria from this time are now considered saints, the most famous being the great Doctors of the Church: Athanasius and Cyril.

But the more obvious lesson of the Alexandrian martyrs for us today is their heroic decision to care for the sick during an epidemic. While our culture seems to believe that only trained medical professionals can help people who are ill, there are many ways to help suffering people which don’t require advanced medical training.

We can make a friendly call to a lonely neighbor, offer to go to the grocery store for a mom with sick kids, listen to and pray for a friend facing chemo, or make an extra effort to be patient with our own sick and grumpy family members. Any of those tasks are within the abilities of every Christian; none of those tasks are easy. They require us to be attentive to the needs of others, be willing to sacrifice our own schedules and preferences, practice listening more than talking, pray more, and grow in patience. In short, they require us to ask the Holy Spirit to make us better, more virtuous followers of Jesus Christ.

Did the Catholics of Alexandria know that they were signing their own death warrants simply by being kind to sick people? Probably not. But can we guess what words our Lord said to them when they faced him after they were martyred? We don’t need to guess because our Lord Himself told us in a parable what He would say to such generous souls.

“Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” (Matt 25:34-36).

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