Acutius of Pozzuoli

Saint Acutius of Pozzuoli was a layman and suffered about the year 305, in the time of the persecution under Diocletian, together with the holy hieromartyr Januarius, the bishop, the deacons Proculus, Sosius and Faustus, the reader Desiderius and Eutychius. They are commemorated on 4 May.

Bishop Januarius was seized and brought to trial before the governor of Campania, Timothy. For his firm confession of the faith he was thrown into a heated furnace but, like the youths of Babylon, came out unharmed. Then Timothy ordered him stretched on a rack and beaten with iron rods until his bones were laid bare. In the crowd were the deacon Faustus and the reader Desiderius, who wept at the sight of their bishop's sufferings. The pagans guessed that they were Christians and threw them into the prison at Pozzuoli with Januarius. In that prison were already, shut up earlier for confessing Christ, two deacons, Sosius and Proculus, and two laymen, Eutychius and Acutius.

The next morning the martyrs were led into the circus to be torn by wild beasts, but the beasts did not touch them. Timothy said that all the wonders came from the sorcery of the Christians, but he was struck blind on the spot and began to cry for help. The gentle bishop Januarius prayed for his healing, and Timothy saw again. Yet the blindness of his soul did not leave him, and, accusing the Christians of sorcery more fiercely still, he ordered all the martyrs beheaded outside the city (305).

Christians of the neighbouring cities took the bodies of the holy martyrs for burial, each city taking one, so as to have a protector before God. The people of Naples took the body of Bishop Januarius and, with it, gathered his clotted blood from the ground. When the vessel with the blood was placed over the relics of the holy martyr, kept in a church in Naples, the blood dissolved and became warm, as if just shed. Many miracles came from the relics of Bishop Januarius: at an eruption of Vesuvius, while the inhabitants prayed to him, the lava stopped before reaching the city, and a devout woman laid an icon with the saint's image on her dead son, and he rose.