Parmenas of Babylon

Holy Hieromartyr Parmenas of Babylon (or of Cordula) was a priest of Babylon and suffered about the year 251, in the third century, at Cordula (or Cordua) in Persia, in the time of the emperor Decius Trajan (249 to 251). The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 12 August (30 July by the old calendar).

According to his Life, the emperor Decius, having defeated the Persians and taken possession of their land, found many Christians there and began to persecute them. Together with others, among them Bishop Polychronius, the presbyter Parmenas was seized and brought to the emperor. He ordered them to offer sacrifice to the idols. For refusing, he cast the saint into prison. At the second questioning he stood silent. Then Decius said to the presbyter that their leader had gone mute. Saint Parmenas replied that the holy bishop had not gone mute, but did not wish to defile his pure lips and cast pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). Angered, the emperor ordered the tongue of Saint Parmenas to be cut out for these words. Nevertheless Parmenas, turning to the holy hierarch Polychronius, said clearly that he asked him to pray for him and that he saw the Holy Spirit upon him. By Decius's order they began to strike the holy bishop Polychronius on the lips with a stone, and he, raising his eyes to heaven, gave up his spirit. His body remained lying before the temple of Saturn. In the night two Persian princes, Abdon and Sennis, secret Christians, came and buried the body of the holy martyr by the city wall.

Soon Decius went to the city of Cordula and ordered three presbyters and two deacons to be led after him. At Cordula he again forced the martyrs to offer sacrifice to idols, but Saint Parmenas, despite his cut-⁠out tongue, answered loudly and firmly for all with a refusal. The emperor, supposing that Saint Parmenas spoke without a tongue by the power of sorcery, ordered the torments to be increased and the confessors to be burned with fire, to have red-⁠hot iron plates laid to their sides and their bodies torn with iron hooks. Then a voice was heard from heaven: Come to me, you humble of heart.

Decius grew ever more furious and ordered the martyrs to be beaten with rods of tin; then he gave them to his governor, a certain Anisius, who continued to torment them and in the end cut off their heads with an axe and threw their bodies to the dogs. For five days the bodies lay unburied and nothing touched them. On the sixth day the Christians, taking the honoured remains by night, buried them with honour.