Martyrs Urban Theodore, Medimnus & 77 Companions

The Martyrs Urban, Theodore, Medimnus and their seventy-seven companions were a body of Orthodox clergy who suffered during the reign of the Arian emperor Valens (364–378). According to the synaxarion, they belonged to the Christian community of the region of Nicomedia and Constantinople, and they died together when the ship carrying them was set afire on the open sea. They are commemorated together on September 5.

By tradition, the Orthodox Christians of the area who refused to accept the Arian heresy were imprisoned and subjected to mistreatment. Driven to despair by the persecution, they resolved to appeal directly to the emperor for protection, and chose a delegation of clergymen to carry their petition. Urban, Theodore and Medimnus are named as the leaders of this delegation, which the sources number at seventy-seven, with some accounts giving eighty in all.

Rather than receiving the petitioners, the emperor ordered the eparch Modestus to put them to death. The synaxarion relates that Modestus, concealing his intent, placed the delegates aboard a ship under the pretext that they were being taken to prison, while privately instructing the ship's officers to set the vessel ablaze once it reached the open water. The ship was burned at sea, and the martyrs perished together; their commemoration preserves the memory of clergy who died for the Orthodox confession during the Arian troubles of the fourth century.