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.