Acepsimas and Aithalas

Saints Acepsimas and Aithalas, martyrs, suffered for Christ in Persia, at Arbela. Acepsimas was a former pagan priest, and Aithalas was a deacon. They are commemorated on 11 December by the old calendar. The name Acepsimas also appears in the forms Apsei or Hafsai.

Acepsimas and Aithalas were from Persia. Acepsimas was a pagan priest in the city of Arbela. He went to a Christian bishop, hoping to receive healing from an illness. The bishop taught him the faith and the Christian life and, by his prayers, healed him. After that Acepsimas returned to Arbela, was ordained priest and began to preach Christianity among the people there. Learning of it, the ruler of Arbela summoned him and ordered his ear cut off and that he be imprisoned.

Aithalas was the deacon of the church of Arbela. Seized for confessing Christianity, he was beaten by the chief of the priests and sent to prison. After that Acepsimas and Aithalas were brought before the ruler of Arbela. He demanded that they renounce Christianity, and when they refused, he sentenced them to be beheaded.

In the twelfth century a short life of the martyrs Acepsimas and Aithalas was translated into Slavonic, and in the first half of the fourteenth century, on Athos, Serbian monks made a new translation. In Russia the life became known from the end of the fourteenth century and, in the sixteenth century, was included in the Great Menaia Reader of Metropolitan Macarius.