Martyrs Sergius and Bacchus

Sergius and Bacchus were two officers of high rank in the army of the Emperor Maximian (or Galerius — the synaxaria differ) at the end of the third century, intimate friends from youth and Christians in secret while serving in the imperial court. Their concealment was undone at a state ceremony at which Maximian commanded the entire court to offer sacrifice at the temple of Jupiter; both refused to enter the temple.

They were stripped of their military belts and the gold chains of their rank, dressed in women's clothing as a public humiliation, and paraded through the streets — a punishment more bitter to their souls, the synaxarion notes, than the physical torments that followed. They were sent under separate orders to the governor Antiochus in Mesopotamia for further examination. Bacchus was beaten to death there at the governor's order; Sergius, after watching his friend's death, was made to walk many leagues in shoes lined with sharp nails, then beheaded at Rosafa in the Syrian desert.

A great pilgrim shrine grew up at Rosafa over the body of Sergius — the city itself was renamed Sergiopolis in his honor and became one of the most-visited pilgrimage sites in the Near East before the Arab conquest. Their joint feast falls on October 7.