Today’s sermon, the last of the year, deals with the martyrdom of twenty thousand Christians, whose sacred memory the Church celebrates today. They were martyred in 304 A.D. in Nicomedia, during the great persecution of Diocletian. The latter was augustus in the East, with his headquarters at Nicomedia, while Maximian was augustus in Rome. These two emperors ruled the Roman state, one in the West, the other in the East, from 285-305. These years were associated with the last great persecutions of the Church. Seven years later, in 312/313, Constantine the Great, who had grown up in Nicomedia as a hostage at Diocletian’s court, put a stop to the persecutions. In 305, after Maximian’s victorious campaign in Ethiopia, the whole of ...
