Nicander of Melitene

Holy Martyr Nicander of Melitene is commemorated together with the Holy Martyr Hieron and other Christians who suffered in Melitene in the time of Diocletian and Maximian. The Azbyka page is the life of Hieron and does not name Nicander in its text; he is counted among Hieron's companions.

Hieron

Hieron was born in Tyana, in Second Cappadocia, of a pious mother, Stratonike. When the emperors sent Lysias to Cappadocia to put to death the Christians who would not worship idols and to enlist strong men in the army, Hieron was sought out as a powerful and courageous man. Holding that a Christian cannot serve alongside worshippers of idols, he refused and put to flight the soldiers sent for him. With eighteen Christians he withdrew into a cave and defended himself, until a friend, Cyriacus, gently persuaded him to come out and go to his mother, a blind and aged widow. Hieron then set out for Melitene with his kinsmen Victor, Matronianus and Antony. In the night a man in white garments appeared to him and assured him that he would soon receive glory from the heavenly King. He told his companions that he went gladly and entrusted his mother to God.

The martyrdom

In Melitene Hieron was imprisoned with thirty-⁠three other Christians. When he urged them not to sacrifice to idols, they agreed. Before Lysias the confessors said that they worshipped the Creator of heaven and earth. Lysias ordered Hieron's hand cut off to the elbow, and had the others beaten without mercy. Victor, Hieron's kinsman, weakened by the beating, bribed a clerk to strike his name from the list and escaped from the prison, but he died soon after, losing both his life and the crown of martyrdom. Hieron wept for him and left his kinsmen a testament: his property in Pisidia to his sister Theotimia, that she might keep his memorial, the rest to his mother, and his severed hand to be taken to his mother and laid in a house in Vadisana, which she should ask for from Rusticus, the official of Ancyra.

On the fifth day Lysias brought them to trial again and, seeing that he could not move them, condemned them to beating and the sword. The martyrs went to the place of execution singing "Blessed are the undefiled in the way", knelt and asked the Lord to receive their souls, and their heads were cut off. Antony and Matronianus asked for Hieron's body; Lysias demanded for the head its weight in gold. A rich man, Chrysaphius, paid the ransom and kept the head with honour. Lysias also sought the hand, but the two fled by night with it to their homeland, and the bodies of the martyrs were buried in secret by other Christians. Stratonike received her son's hand with tears and did as he had left. Chrysaphius later raised a church on the place where the saints were beheaded and placed the martyr's head in it.

They are commemorated on 20 November, in the new style.