Besas

Saint Besas, Martyr, was a soldier at Alexandria and suffered there in the persecution of Decius, in the year 250. All that is known of him is found in the letter that Dionysius of Alexandria sent to Fabius of Antioch, with long extracts preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in the Ecclesiastical History. His martyrdom is closely linked with that of the two citizens of Alexandria, Julian and Eunus. While these were being scourged in the streets of the city, Besas took up their defense and rebuked those who approved the torments. Denounced and arrested, he confessed the Christian faith and was condemned to beheading.

His veneration, under different names and on different dates, is attested by the Syriac martyrology, the Hieronymian, and the Byzantine and Alexandrian synaxaria. In the Latin Church his name entered the early medieval martyrologies and from there the Roman Martyrology, on 27 February.