Martyr Azes of Isauria and 150 soldiers

Trial and Martyrdom

For confessing the Christian faith, Azes was arrested and brought to trial before the eparch Aquilinus. The one hundred and fifty soldiers dispatched to apprehend him were, according to the account, turned to the path of salvation and received baptism with water that, the synaxarion relates, sprang forth through the saint's prayer.

Azes urged the soldiers to keep the commandment to obey those in authority, and so to bring him before the eparch. Before Aquilinus, both the saint and the soldiers confessed their Christian faith, and for this they were all beheaded.

The synaxarion adds that the eparch also put to death his own wife and daughter, who had come to believe in Christ after witnessing the steadfastness of Azes under torture.

Commemoration and Sources

The feast falls on November 19 on the New Calendar and December 2 on the Old Calendar. The Great Synaxaristes records the commemoration as the martyrdom of Saint Azas and his military companions, to the number of one hundred and fifty, under the emperor Diocletian and the tribune Aquilinus, dating it to about 284.

The commemoration is cross-referenced across several calendar and reference sources, including the OCA Synaxarion, the Orthodox Calendar (Pravoslavie), the Moscow Patriarchate, the Church of Greece, and the Orthodox Encyclopedia. No dedicated Wikipedia or OrthodoxWiki article exists for Azes of Isauria, and the account rests chiefly on the synaxarion tradition.