Saints
“Agathonicus and companions”
Martyr under Maximian · Killed at Selymbria
A man of noble family at Nicomedia who converted a number of pagans, including some of the imperial household, and was taken with several companions when the persecution reached them. They were marched west toward the capital and killed on the road at Selymbria in Thrace.
His life
He was of a distinguished Nicomedian family and used the standing it gave him to argue for the faith, and the accounts credit him with the conversion of a number of educated pagans, among them men connected to the court.
The official Eutolmius, sent into the region against the Christians, took the ascetic Zoticus and his disciples, who were killed on the spot, and then arrested Agathonicus with his companions Princeps, Theoprepius, Acindynus and Severian.
They were made to walk toward Byzantium in chains. Theoprepius and Acindynus could not keep up and were killed on the road, and Princeps died of the treatment. The rest reached Selymbria in Thrace, where Agathonicus was interrogated a final time and beheaded with the others, about the year 305.
A church was built over the grave, and the Emperor Constantine is credited with enlarging it. The Church keeps his memory on the twenty second of August.
Holy St. Agathonicus of Nicomedia, pray to God for us.