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| Martyrdom of the Saints Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zeno in the City of Gaza.
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Chapter IX.—Martyrdom
of the Saints Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zeno in the City of Gaza.
As I have advanced thus far in
my history, and have given an account of the death of George and of
Theodoritus, I deem it right to relate some particulars concerning the
death of the three brethren, Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zeno.1381
| 1381Soz. alone reports this, probably from local
martyrology or from Bishop Zeno.
|
The inhabitants of Gaza, being inflamed with rage against them, dragged
them from their house, in which they had concealed themselves and cast
them into prison, and beat them. They then assembled in the theater,
and cried out loudly against them, declaring that they had committed
sacrilege in their temple, and had used the past opportunity for the
injury and insult of paganism. By these shouts and by instigating one
another to the murder of the brethren, they were filled with fury; and
when they had been mutually incited, as a crowd in revolt is wont to
do, they rushed to the prison. They handled the men very cruelly;
sometimes with the face and sometimes with the back upon the ground,
the victims were dragged along, and were dashed to pieces by the
pavement. I have been told that even women quitted their distaffs and
pierced them with the weaving-spindles, and that the cooks in the
markets snatched from their stands the boiling pots foaming with hot
water and poured it over the victims, or perforated them with spits.
When they had torn the flesh from them and crushed in their skulls, so
that the brain ran out on the ground, their bodies were dragged out of
the city and flung on the spot generally used as a receptacle for the
carcasses of beasts; then a large fire was lighted, and they burned the
bodies; the remnant of the bones not consumed by the fire was mixed
with those of camels and asses, that they might not be found easily.
But they were not long concealed; for a Christian woman, who was an
inhabitant, though not a native of Gaza, collected the bones at night
by the direction of God. She put them in an earthen pot and gave them
to Zeno, their cousin, to keep, for thus God had informed her in a
dream, and also had indicated to the woman where the man lived: and
before she saw him, he was shown to her, for she was previously
unacquainted with Zeno; and when the persecution had been agitated
recently he remained concealed. He was within a little of being seized
by the people of Gaza and being put to death; but he had effected his
escape while the people were occupied in the murder of his cousins, and
had fled to Anthedon, a maritime city, about twenty stadia from Gaza
and similarly favorable to paganism and devoted to idolatry. When the
inhabitants of this city discovered that he was a Christian, they beat
him terribly on the back with rods and drove him out of the city. He
then fled to the harbor of Gaza and concealed himself; and here the
woman found him and gave him the remains. He kept them carefully in his
house until the reign of Theodosius, when he was ordained bishop; and
he erected a house of prayer beyond the walls of the city, placed an
altar there, and deposited the bones of the martyrs near those of
Nestor, the Confessor. Nestor had been on terms of intimacy with his
cousins, and was seized with them by the people of Gaza, imprisoned,
and scourged. But those who dragged him through the city were affected
by his personal beauty; and, struck with compassion, they cast him,
before he was quite dead, out of the city. Some persons found him, and
carried him to the house of Zeno, where he expired during the dressing
of his cuts and wounds. When the inhabitants of Gaza began to reflect
on the enormity of their crime, they trembled lest the emperor should
take vengeance on them.
It was reported that the emperor was filled with
indignation, and had determined upon punishing the decuria; but this
report was false, and had no foundation save in the fears and
self-accusations of the criminals. Julian, far from evincing as much
anger against them as he had manifested against the Alexandrians on the
murder of George, did not even write to rebuke the people of Gaza. On
the contrary, he deposed the governor of the province, and held him as
a suspect, and represented that clemency alone prevented his being put
to death. The crime imputed to him was, that of having arrested some of
the inhabitants of Gaza, who were reported to have begun the sedition
and murders, and of having imprisoned them until judgment could be
passed upon them in accordance with the laws. “For what right had
he,” asked the emperor, “to arrest the citizens merely for
retaliating on a few Galileans the injuries that had been inflicted on
them and their gods?” This, it is said, was the fact in the
case. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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