JULIANA OF NICOMEDIA

In the Orthodox calendar there is a special large group of saints called the “Nicomedian martyrs”. Their memory is celebrated on various days of the year and among them there are many very significant names of popular piety. The Nicomedian saints were the Great Martyr George and Panteleimon the Healer. The calendar celebrates the memory of entire gatherings of these saints, such as the 1003 and 20,000 martyrs, whose joint testimony of faith has been preserved in the memory of the Church since ancient times.

The city of Nicomedia, modern Turkish Izmit, in 286-292, and also at times up until the very foundation of Constantinople in 330, was the capital, or better yet, one of the capitals of the Roman Empire. The fact is that the Emperor himself resided in it, which in those days meant acquiring the status of a capital. This new definition of the city was not formal, but its meaning was quite real.

In 303, Diocletian began the persecution of Christians. It went down in history as the Great Persecution and lasted ten years. Some local Eastern Churches of antiquity chose the beginning of the Persecution as the starting date for the beginning of the new era. Behind this stood the conviction that the Church flourishes, is purified, is reborn in persecution. In the same way, the first Christians called the days of the martyrs’ deaths “birthdays”.

The previous major persecution, before the ‘Age of Diocletian’, in the middle of the 3rd century, was the persecution of Decius (249-251) and Valerian (253-260). In the half-century since then, several generations of Christians accustomed to times of peace had grown up in the Empire. In Nicomedia by that time there was a very significant Christian population, communities and churches existed. Many secret Christians were also at the court of the Emperor himself. This was a challenge, the scale of which in the eyes of the pagan Roman world was incredible.

By beginning the persecution of Christians in the capital city, the pagans hoped that the number of renunciations of the Faith in Christ would be enormous. In this way, it was possible to simultaneously mock the Christian faith, strengthen previous beliefs, and give legitimacy to the reforms that Diocletian himself was carrying out in the Empire at that time.

The memory of the holy martyr Juliana of Nicomedia, and with her 500 men and 130 women who suffered in Nicomedia, is celebrated by the Church on December 21. Due to the fact that in the Churches that adhere to the Julian calendar, the calendar memories of saints are shifted by 13 days, the celebration of Juliana falls on January 3, that is, on the third day of the New Year. What a wonderful, albeit accidental, coincidence of sounds: Saint Juliana and the Julian calendar!

Another coincidence is in the date itself, January 3. It recalls the words of Scripture and the Creed that the Lord Jesus was resurrected on the third day. “I believe in the Lord Jesus, who was resurrected on the third day according to the Scriptures,” says the Creed. In biblical texts, “the third day” is the time when all human hope is abolished and God Himself begins to act.

“We are honored and dishonored, blamed and praised; considered deceivers, and yet faithful; unknown, and yet known; thought to be dead, and behold, we live; chastened, and yet not dying; sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing; poor, and yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing all things,” writes the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 6:8-10). Describing the apostolic community, he thereby gives all subsequent generations of believers a definition of the Church.

The Church, this „poor, persecuted, wandering Body of the Lord in history“, celebrates the memory of Saint Juliana, the “Bride of Christ,” as Christians called the holy martyrs, on the third day of the New Year. The essence of the story of Juliana’s suffering is as follows. Her rich father wanted to marry her off to the prefect, and was refused. The groom’s name was Eleusius, and his father’s name was Africanus. The reason for the refusal was Christianity. The saint confessed it secretly, moreover, she had already been baptized.

This refusal of early Christian holy virgins to marry noble Romans of that time, who were pagans, was a common phenomenon. It is important to remember that it was not connected with the monastic ideal. After all, the essence of the Roman civil religion was revealed in two postulates. One of them directly affected the sphere of politics, the other - public life. Both of them, in their pagan manifestation, were almost incompatible with the Christian confession.

The fact is that the Emperor was deified and recognized as the Lord. In addition, he bore the title of ‚Pontifex Maximus’, that is, he was, in fact, the ‘High Priest’. The husband, as he was then in the categories of customs and law, the ‘head of the family’, not only brought his wife into the house, but from the point of view of Roman law, adopted the bride. He became her father. Thus, for Christians of that time, consent to this could mean renunciation. The nobility of the spouse obliged him not only to participate in pagan ceremonies, but also to lead them. “Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your Father, who is in heaven; and do not be called teachers, for one is your Teacher, Christ,” the Lord said in the Gospel (Matthew 23:9-10).

Juliana led a lifestyle dedicated to God. And although the narrative of her suffering emphasizes that she was a virgin, she was not a „nun“ in the modern sense of the word. It is important to understand that, inspired by biblical texts, early Christianity did not want to, and could not, see in the virginity of virgins dedicated to God simply asceticism aimed at mortifying the flesh or consciously refusing to bear children. In this, in particular, it differed from Gnosticism or Manichaeism, which despised and destroyed life, the world and the flesh. “I will destroy those who destroy the earth,” the Lord Himself warns in the Apocalypse (Rev. 11:18). It should be noted that the celibacy of ancient bishops was, in addition to the missionary ideal proposed by Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 7:7), conditioned by the requirement of impeccability, incorruptibility and fearlessness. After all, due to persecution, a person’s acceptance of the episcopal ministry at that time meant a readiness to suffer for Christ.

In addition to the foundation of the Christian confession, the impossibility of compromise with paganism, whether through service to the Empire or through marriage, the virginity of virgins itself, and here the peculiarity and uniqueness of the female vocation in the eyes of the Ancient Church, became, was a place of immutability, a place or topos of the display of the presence of the One Who, being above the laws of time and being, became human being, entered into time, and, in the words of the Creed, “for us man and for our salvation was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,” became the True Future of every person. “The Son of God, who is beyond all time, became temporary in order to free us from time,” wrote the Church Father Saint Augustine (354-430).

It was precisely this biblical, and not philosophical-religious-ascetic orientation of the virginity of Christian virgins dedicated to God, that drove the pagans into a frenzy. This especially made the rulers and the powerful of this world indignant. After all, they, who deified the Emperor, saw that the only true Conqueror and Master of life and death, soul, body and spirit - the Lord Jesus Christ, witnessed by the virgins - triumphs in the weakest vessels of the bodies of Christian women (cf. 1 Pet. 3:7).

In the context of what has just been said, the trial of Christian virgins was necessarily built in two directions, each of which was extremely important for the pagan rulers: the virgins were required to renounce their faith; they were promised a happy marriage with a pagan spouse.

That is exactly how, according to the thoughts of the idolaters, a Christian virgin had to make a double renunciation. To proclaim the Emperor as Lord, and, according to the logic of Roman law, to find a powerful pagan husband as their “new father.” After all, the Romans remembered very well Whom the Christians called, confessed, invoked, and called their One and Only Father in Heaven. From the trials of the martyrs and from the Creed, which, unlike the sacraments, was not a subject closed to the unbaptized, the pagans could know that Christians recognized Jesus Christ as their One and Only Lord.

According to the life, Juliana did not renounce her faith and refused the marriage proposal that, according to the martyrdom acts, the pagan ruler made to her. When the saint was seized and brought to trial, many people testified to what had happened. Many converted to faith. Therefore, today’s memory of the martyrs is collective. For along with Juliana, the memory of many men and women who believed in Christ at the sight of her suffering is celebrated. All of them were executed for their confession.

The ancient Church called the martyrdom of unbaptized people for Christ ‘baptism of blood’. It is extremely important to understand that the ‘Baptism of Blood’ in the eyes of the Ancient Church was performed not only and not so much because of the martyr’s shedding of his own blood, but because of the great mysterious likeness of the voluntary suffering of the martyrs to the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. As He Himself predicted to the Apostles: ‘The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized’ (Mark 10:39). This is the image of baptism, with which the Lord Himself was baptized, which became baptism as the washing of His Blood.

To him that overcometh will I give the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone, on which is written a new name, which no man knoweth, save he that receiveth it,” is said in the Apocalypse (Rev. 2:17). Unlike Juliana herself, who had already been baptized by the time of her suffering, we will not know the names of these many saints until the Second Coming of Christ. Thus, by the mysterious predestination of God in history, the holy words of the Revelation of John the Theologian were fulfilled on them. They received a new name on the snow-white stone, Jesus Christ, this great and immaculate foundation of the Church, the Bride of Christ. This name is washed by His Blood. We call upon the names of the saints daily in prayer asking for intercession.