Hieromartyr Januarius Bishop
of Benevento, and the deacons Proculus, Sossius and Faustus, Desiderius the Reader, Eutychius and Acution suffered martyrdom
for Christ about the year 305 during the persecution ordered by the emperor Diocletian (284-305).
They arrested Saint Januarius and led
him to trial before Menignus, the governor of Campagna (central Italy). Because of his firm confession of Christianity, they
threw the saint into a red-hot furnace. But like the Babylonian youths, he came out unharmed. Then at Menignus’s command,
they stretched him out on a bench and beat him with iron rods until his bones were exposed.
In the crowd were Deacon Faustus and the Reader Desiderius,
who wept at the sight of their bishop’s suffering. The pagans surmised that they were Christians, and threw them into
prison with the hieromartyr Januarius, in the city of Puteolum. At this prison were two deacons who had been jailed for confessing
Christ: Saints Sossius and Proculus, and also two laymen, Saints Eutychius and Acution.
On the following morning they led out all the martyrs
into the circus to be torn to pieces by wild beasts, but the beasts would not touch them. Menignus claimed that all the miracles
were due to sorcery on the part of the Christians, and immediately he became blinded and cried out for help. The gentle hieromartyr
Januarius prayed for his healing, and Menignus recovered his sight. The torturer’s blindness of soul, however, was not
healed. He accused the Christians of sorcery, and ordered the martyrs beheaded before the walls of the city (+ 305).
Christians from surrounding cities
took up the bodies of the holy martyrs for burial, and those of each city took one, in order to have an intercessor before
God. The inhabitants of Neapolis (Naples) took the body of the hieromartyr Januarius. With the body, they also collected his
dried blood.
Since
the fifteenth century, the blood liquifies when the container is placed near another relic, believed to be the martyr’s
head. Many miracles proceeded from the relics of the hieromartyr Januarius. During an eruption of Vesuvius around 431, the
inhabitants of the city prayed to Saint Januarius to help them. The lava stopped, and did not reach the city.
