The life of St Acacius the Centurion at Byzantium
He was sent up the chain of command for harsher questioning, tortured repeatedly by successive officers who doubted his composure could be genuine, and finally, weakened by wounds, hunger, and the hardship of the march itself, was brought as a prisoner toward Byzantium.
Tradition holds that Acacius found unexpected strength through his ordeal, encouraging his fellow prisoners and, by his bearing, leading some of them toward the Christian faith before his death. He was beheaded outside the city in the year 303. His relics were kept at Constantinople in a church built in his honor before later being carried west to Calabria; devotion to him spread through both East and West, and in the West he came to be counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers invoked in time of trial.
