Alexander of Rome

Saint Alexander of Rome was a soldier in the Roman army who received the crown of martyrdom for refusing to offer sacrifice to idols. Our sources do not agree on the age: one says he died in 289, others that he suffered at the beginning of the fourth century, in the time of the emperor Maximian Herculius (284 to 305). The Orthodox Church remembers him on 13 May (26 May on the new calendar), and in Romania and Armenia on 25 February.

The confession

Alexander served at Rome in the regiment of the tribune Tiberian. When the emperor Maximian Herculius issued an order obliging the citizens to offer sacrifice on a certain day in the temple of Jupiter (in other texts, Zeus), Tiberian gathered his soldiers and commanded them to go to the sacrifice, but Alexander refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods. Tiberian told the emperor that among his soldiers there was a Christian.

Soldiers were sent to bring Alexander to the emperor. The saint confessed before the emperor his faith in Christ and refused to bow to the idols. The emperor tried to tempt him with promises of honours, but Alexander remained firm and was subjected to tortures, which he bore with courage. Maximian gave him into the hands of Tiberian, who had been sent to Thrace to persecute the Christians. Alexander was put in chains and taken to Thrace, and on the way he was cruelly tortured several times. At Drizipara, Tiberian condemned him to death and had him beheaded. Another source says only that he died on the way to Thrace, and that his mother, Pimenia, a witness of the martyrdom, buried him near the river Ergina.

Veneration

The saint's relics are in the church of Saints Alexander and Agapitus in the monastery of Saint Seraphim of Sarov near Pistoia, in Italy, and in Poland, in the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Topilets, in the Bialystok-⁠Gdansk diocese of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church. In the village of Belica, near Kičevo, in Macedonia, there is a church dedicated to the saint, the only one in the country, and on the archaeological site of the same name there are signs that the grave of Saint Alexander may be there.