Martyrs Acepsimas, Joseph, and Aeithalas of Persia

Acepsimas was the aged bishop of Hnaita in Persia, Joseph his presbyter, and Aeithalas his deacon — a fourth-century episcopal household in the church of Persia during the great forty-year persecution under Sapor II that fell upon the Christians of the Persian Empire with peculiar cruelty. All three were arrested together in 376 and held at the royal court for examination.

The Persian method of breaking the Christian clergy was particular: rather than execute them quickly, the magi who interrogated them subjected them to a prolonged sequence of scourgings, withdrawals of food, and chained exposure to the elements over many months, calculated to reduce strong bodies to compliance. Acepsimas was eighty years old when he was arrested; he survived the rack and the cold for some weeks before he died of his injuries in the dungeon, the synaxarion records, with his last word a confession of the Trinity.

Joseph the presbyter and Aeithalas the deacon lived on a little longer, were beaten again at intervals, and were at last stoned to death together — their dual companionship at the moment of their crowning matching the priestly and diaconal ranks of their service. The trinity of their martyrdom — bishop, priest, deacon — is read in the synaxarion as an icon of the Trinity they had confessed. Their joint feast falls on November 3.