Sts. Gordian and Epimachus

Epimachus suffered at Alexandria under Decius in 250 with one Alexander.

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May 10 · Martyrs

Sts. Gordian and…

Sts. Gordian and Epimachus

Epimachus suffered at Alexandria under Decius in 250 with one Alexander.

Traditional feast

May 10
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

May 10
Secondary source · Wikipedia

Represents

Martyrs

Their story

Adapted in modern English from Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints · little is known

Epimachus suffered at Alexandria under Decius in 250 with one Alexander. They were beaten with clubs, torn with iron hooks and burned in lime, as St. Dionysius of Alexandria relates.

Gordian was beheaded at Rome under Julian the Apostate (emperor 361–363, raised Christian, who tried to restore paganism) in 362 and laid in a cave where the body of Epimachus, brought from Alexandria, already rested. Their relics are now kept by the great Benedictine (monks following the Rule of St. Benedict) abbey of Kempton, in the diocese of Augsburg. The text on this page gives 362.

Early life

The book says little or nothing about early life. This is how the account begins.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 0 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Keep their day. Remember them on May 10 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.

Read more

The full original · 0 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. By the Greeks the Translation of the body of S. Epimachus to Constantinople on March I ith. Authority: — The Acts, which, however, are not trustworthy, as they make the martyrs suffer at Rome after interrogation before Julian the Emperor. Now it is certain that Julian never was at Rome during his brief reign.] Gordian was a magistrate (vicarious) of Julian the Apostate, and was sent by the emperor to visit a Christian priest, named Janisarius, who was imprisoned for his faith, and endeavour to make him abjure Christ. But the result of the interview was the conversion of Gordian. Gordian was degraded from his office, and was cruelly martyred. His body was buried by a servant in the same tomb as S. Epimachus, a martyr of Alexandria, which had been brought to Rome in the previous reign. The Greeks claimed to have had the bones of S. Epimachus translated from Rome to Constantinople. But the relics of both saints are now in the abbey of Kempten in Bavaria.

Feast days

Feast: May 10

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
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One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from Sts. Gordian and…'s story, and a nudge to keep going.

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Sts. Calepodius and…

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St. Comgall

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St. Solangia

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← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Story sources

Sources

Credits

Image: Gordianus.jpg · Unknown · Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.

Image: Unknown, Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.