Alexander the Phrygian

Saint Alexander the Phrygian, a physician, was one of the forty-⁠three martyrs of Lyon (Lugdunum), in Gaul, put to death for Christ in the year 177, in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. He is commemorated on 7 August.

In the same year the churches of Lyon and Vienne composed a letter to the churches of Asia and Phrygia on the courage and steadfastness in the faith of the Christians of Gaul; the letter, preserved in the version of Eusebius of Caesarea, is the earliest documentary testimony to Christianity in the territory of present-⁠day France and is attributed to Saint Irenaeus, successor of Bishop Pothinus at Lyon. It tells how the pagans did not let Christians into houses, baths or the market, and the mob beat them in the streets. By order of the tribune and the city officials, the Christians were led to the square and examined before the people; they confessed the faith and were imprisoned until the arrival of the governor, who dealt with them cruelly.

A difference was seen among the Christians: some were ready for martyrdom, others feared it; every day new ones were seized, precisely the most active. Pagan slaves, frightened by the tortures, slandered their masters, saying that at their gatherings the Christians ate human flesh and committed other crimes. This stirred up the fury of the crowd still more. Subjected to fearful tortures were Sanctus, the deacon of Vienne, Maturus, only just baptized, Attalus of Pergamum and Blandina. Their unshaken confession left the tormentors helpless: their bodies were one open wound, and yet they could not be made to renounce. Bishop Pothinus of Lyon, an old man over ninety and weak in body, presented himself before the judge; the crowd beat him and struck him with stones, and, thrown into prison barely breathing, after two days he gave up his soul.

In all this time the physician Alexander, a Phrygian by birth, long settled in Gaul, boldly confessed the faith even during the trial. The next day he was brought into the amphitheatre with Attalus. They were first tortured in various ways, for the amusement of the crowd, then beheaded. Attalus was set on a red-⁠hot iron chair and confessed the true God until his last breath. Alexander, during the tortures, remained with God in his heart, without uttering a groan or a word. On the last day of the games Blandina was brought into the arena again, with the youth Ponticus, fifteen years old, who died after enduring all the trials. Blandina, last of all, died after suffering the most: she was scourged, left to the beasts, set on a heated griddle and, at last, placed in a wicker basket and thrown to a bull.

The pagans mocked even the dead bodies: those suffocated in prison they threw to the dogs and guarded day and night so that Christians would not bury them; what remained of the fire and the beasts' teeth, torn and burnt pieces, heads and trunks, lay many days unburied. After six days the pagans burned the bodies and threw the ashes into the river Rhone, to erase their trace, thinking that thus they took away their hope of resurrection. The martyrs of Lyon, though they had endured so many tortures, did not call themselves martyrs and did not allow others to call them so, but saw Christ as the true Martyr and those who had departed before; they prayed even for their executioners, like the first martyr Stephen, and did not exalt themselves over those who had denied, but prayed that faith and life in Christ be granted them.