Tarachus, Probus and Andronicus

Holy Martyrs Tarachus, Probus and Andronicus were three Christians put to death in the persecution of Diocletian (around 304) in Cilicia. They are commemorated on 11 October in the Roman Catholic Church and on 12 October (25 October by the old calendar) in the Orthodox Church. The English-⁠language source says that the two surviving versions of their acts are medieval fictions; Ruinart held the first version entirely authentic, Harnack doubted it, and Delehaye classes their martyrdom among the historical romances.

According to the first version, Tarachus, a Roman born at Claudiopolis in Isauria (according to the Serbian source, in Syria) and a former soldier, the plebeian Probus of Side in Pamphylia, and the patrician Andronicus, of a prominent family of Ephesus, were tried by the governor Numerian Maximus and horribly tortured three times in several cities, among them Tarsus, Mopsuestia and Anazarbus in Cilicia; the Serbian source says that they were arrested at Pompeiopolis and brought to trial before the proconsul Maximus. According to tradition, Tarachus was beaten with stones. Probus was whipped, his feet burned with red-⁠hot irons, his back and sides pierced with heated spits, and finally he was cut with knives. Andronicus too was cut to pieces with knives.

Then they were condemned to be given to the beasts, and when the beasts would not touch them in the amphitheatre (according to the Serbian source, they even licked their wounds), they were put to death with the sword. Three men, named Marcian, Felix and Verus (in the Serbian source Macarius, Felix and Verius), witnessed their martyrdom and added an epilogue to the saints' acts. They took the bodies of the three, buried them and watched over them for the rest of their lives, asking to be buried, at the end of their own, in the same vault.

Tarachus is also venerated in the Maronite Church, where he is called Mar Edna. The Syriac word edna means ear, in relation to Tarachus' ears being cut off in his tortures. He is the patron of those who suffer from ear ailments. A monastery of Mar Edna exists at Aqoura in Lebanon, and a church of Mar Edna at Ain Akrine.