Amonites of Melitene

Holy Martyr Amonites of Melitene is commemorated on 20 November together with Holy Martyr Hieron and the other martyrs who suffered at Melitene, in Armenia, in the time of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian. The sources available to us give no further details of Amonites himself; the account below is that of Hieron and his companions.

Hieron of Tyana

Hieron was born in the city of Tyana in the second Cappadocia, of a pious mother, Stratonica. When the emperors learned that the inhabitants of Armenia and Cappadocia refused to worship idols, they sent two cunning and cruel men: Agricolaus to Armenia and Lysias to Cappadocia, with orders to kill all Christians who would not bow to idols and to enlist in the army the strong men and youths. Lysias learned of Hieron as a healthy and very courageous man, and sent soldiers to seize him. They found him at work in the field, but Hieron refused to go, judging it harmful for a Christian to serve alongside idolaters. Moved by anger, he took a piece of wood and beat them, so hard that the soldiers fled, and he chased them as a lion chases kids. When more were sent again, he took eighteen Christians with him and hid in a cave, from which he repelled the pagans' attacks. Then the commander sent a friend of Hieron, named Cyriacus, who told the soldiers to withdraw, since Hieron could be taken only by gentleness, and persuaded him to come out of the cave and go home to his mother, an old and blind widow. She wept aloud for her son, saying that he was the support of her old age and the light of her blind eyes.

Martyrdom

Hieron took leave of his mother and set out for Melitene with the soldiers, with his kinsmen Victor, Matronian and Antony, and with other believers. On the way, at night, one clothed in white appeared to him and announced that he walked the right road, that he would soon depart this life and receive honour and glory from the Heavenly King. The next day, at Melitene, he was shut in prison with thirty-⁠three other Christians and told them not to bow to idols but to offer a sacrifice of praise to the true God. Brought in the morning before Lysias's tribunal, they answered that they would be fools if they gave the honour due to God alone to things of wood and stone. Hieron confessed that he had beaten the soldiers, and Lysias ordered his hand cut off, while the others were beaten without mercy. Victor, a kinsman of Hieron, in fear, bribed the clerk who kept the list and was let out of the prison, but he died soon after and lost his property, his life and the crown. Hieron wept bitterly for him. His severed hand he arranged to be brought to his mother. On the fifth day Lysias demanded again that they worship idols and, succeeding neither with gentleness nor with threats, ordered them beaten without pity, then beheaded. The saints went to the place of execution singing "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord", knelt praying "Lord Jesus Christ, receive our souls" and their heads were cut off.

Hieron's head was ransomed with gold by a rich man, Chrysaphius, and the hand was brought to his mother, Stratonica, by Antony and Matronian, who fled by night. The bodies of the other martyrs were buried in secret by other Christians. Later Chrysaphius built a church on the place where the martyrs had been beheaded and laid the martyr's head in it with honour.