In the year 308 there were at the same time six emperors, successors
of Dioclesian, namely, in the East Galerius, Lucinius, and Maximinus;
in the West, Constantine, Maxentius, and his father, Maximian
Herculeus, who had reassumed the purple. Firmilian, the successor of
Urbanus in the government of Palestine, under Maximinus II., carried
on the persecution with great cruelty. When fourscore and seventeen
confessors, men, women, and children, out of an innumerable multitude
of Christians who were banished a long while before to the porphyry
quarries in Thebais, were brought before him, he commanded the sinews
of the joint of their left feet to be burnt with a hot iron; and
their right eyes to be put out, and the eye holes burnt with a hot
iron to the very bottom of the orb. In this condition he sent them to
work at the mines in Palestine about mount Libanus. Many others were
brought before this inhuman judge from different towns of Palestine,
and were tormented various ways.
Among the Christians taken at Gaza, whilst they were assembled to
hear the holy scriptures read, was a holy virgin named Thea, whom
the judge threatened with the prostitution of her chastity in the
public stews. She, to whom her virtue was most dear, reproached him
for such infamous injustices. Firmilian, enraged at her liberty of
speech, caused her to be inhumanly scourged, then stretched on the
rack, and her sides torn with iron hooks till the bare ribs appeared.
Valentina, a pious Christian virgin of Cæsarea, who had also by vow
consecrated her chastity to God, being present at this spectacle,
cried out to the judge from the midst of the crowd, “How long will
you thus torment my sister?” She was immediately apprehended, and
being dragged by force to the altar, she threw herself upon it, and
overturned it with her feet, together with the fire and sacrifice
which stood ready upon it. Firmilian, provoked beyond bounds,
commanded her sides to be more cruelly torn than any others. Being at
length wearied with tormenting her, he ordered the two virgins to be
tied together and burnt. This was executed on the 25th of July, 308.
One Paul, an illustrious confessor, was beheaded for the faith on the
same day, by an order of this judge. The fervor with which he prayed
at the place of execution for the emperor, the judge who condemned
him, and his executioner, drew tears from all that were present.
Soon after, one hundred and thirty Egyptian confessors, by an order
of Maximinus, had one eye pulled out, and one foot maimed, and were
sent, some to the mines in Palestine, others to those in Cilicia. See
Eusebius de Martyr. Palestinæ, c. 8; Tillemont, t. 5; Fleury, l. ix.;
Orsi, t. 4.