28 tekemet 2016
The Ethiopian Synaxarium
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, ONE GOD. AMEN.
On this day the great saints Marcianus and Mercurius became martyrs. These holy men were disciples of Saint Paul the martyr, Archbishop of the city of Constantine. When the Emperor Constantine, the son of Constantine the Great, reigned, the belief of the infidel Arius waxed strong and he made himself the enemy of Abba Paul, Archbishop of the city of Constantine, and he banished him to the country of Armenia, and strangled him and
killed him there. And saints Marcianus and Mercurius wrote jointly on the day of the death of Saint Paul, and cursed the emperor, and they said of him that he believed the faith of Arius the infidel, and they anathematized Arius and the emperor. And a certain wicked man went and made accusations against them to the emperor, and said unto him, “They have cursed thee and they have cursed Arius.” Now the emperor was dwelling in a certain village, and he sent and had the saints brought to him, and he commanded [his soldiers] to slay them with the sword, and they slew them and buried them where they had been slain, and their bodies remained in that place until the days of John of the Golden Mouth (Chrysostom). And when John heard the history of them he sent and brought their honorable bodies into the city of Constantine; and he built a beautiful church for them, and he translated their bodies and laid them in it, and the people made a great feast as at this day. Salutation to Marcianus and Mercurius, disciples of Paul the archbishop.
And on this day also are commemorated Abba Maksu, and Macarius, and the death of Japheth the son of Noah, whom his father blessed, saying, “God shall make broad the land of Japheth.”
And on this day also died Saint Abba Yam’ata, who was one of the Nine Saints. Salutation to Yam’ata, whose body was buried in a rock on the top of a mountain.
Salutation to Abraham, who separated himself from the Gentiles, and to Jacob, and to Isaac. [This paragraph is not in the Bodleian MS.]
Glory be to God Who is glorified in His Saints. Amen.
Kidus Amanuel
አማኑኤል