Hieromartyr Symeon, Bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon

Symeon Bar Sabba'e was the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon — the twin cities that served as the Sassanian Persian capital — in the early fourth century, the leader of the Persian church through the early phase of the great forty-year persecution under Sapor II. When the Roman Empire became Christian under Constantine, the Persian king began to suspect his own Christian subjects of Roman sympathies; in 339 he issued the first of the long sequence of edicts requiring Persian Christians either to renounce their faith or to pay heavy taxes on the king's behalf.

Symeon refused to gather the tax from his Persian Christian community, declaring that it would be a betrayal both of the poor and of the faith. He was arrested, brought before Sapor in chains, and offered the choice of conformity or death. The synaxarion records the long examination — Symeon, in the king's presence, refusing to perform the customary obeisance to the sun-image; the king ordering Symeon's entire household and clergy arrested in turn.

On the eve of Pascha 341, Symeon was beheaded along with one hundred and fifty bishops, presbyters, and deacons of the Persian church. The mass execution was particularly directed — as Sapor said — to ensure that the Persian Christians would have no shepherds for their feast. Their joint feast falls on April 17.