St. Niketas the Goth

Niketas was a Goth, born in the fourth century among his people who dwelt along the river Danube, beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. He was instructed in the Christian faith as it had been confessed at Nicaea, and the tradition associates his enlightenment with the labors of the bishop who had brought the Gospel to the Goths and had been among the Fathers of the first council.

Christianity had taken root among the Goths, but it was bound up with the wars and divisions of their rulers. When the chieftain who held the upper hand turned against the Christians, a fierce persecution arose, and the faithful among the Goths were called to choose between their fathers' gods and the Cross. Niketas did not waver, but the more openly confessed Christ and strengthened others to stand.

He was seized and subjected to many torments to make him deny the faith. Enduring all of them, he was at the last condemned to the fire and burned, giving up his soul to God about the year 372, and so was numbered among the great martyrs of the Church.

The tradition recounts that his body, when the fire had gone out, was found whole and unharmed by the flames, and that a friend named Marian, guided to the place, recovered it and bore it away to his own country, to the city of Mopsuestia in Cilicia. There the relics of the martyr were enshrined and became a source of healing for those who came to them.

The Church keeps his memory on the fifteenth of September, honoring Niketas the Goth among the great martyrs as one of the first fruits of his people offered to Christ.