The life of Cyprian, Justina and Theoctistus
His own parents gave him to the old gods as a child, and he spent more than twenty years travelling among the centers of pagan learning and magic before he came home to Antioch famous for spells, for calling up plague, and for speaking with the dead.
Justina, a young Christian of that city who had already brought her own parents to the faith, refused a young man's offer of marriage, and he went to Cyprian for a charm to win her. Nothing Cyprian tried touched her, not sickness sent on the city nor demons sent against her, and she turned back every attack with prayer and the sign of the cross. Watching his own arts fail against her, Cyprian came at last to see what he had made of his life, the people he had ruined and the deaths his sorcery had caused. He burned his books and went to the bishop, and would not leave the church even before he was baptized. He rose through the offices of the Church within a year and became a bishop himself, and under his teaching the idols of his own city fell out of use. When Diocletian's persecution reached them both, he and Justina were taken to Nicomedia and put to death together. Justina was beheaded first, and Cyprian followed her, and a soldier named Theoctistus, watching her die well, declared himself a Christian on the spot and was killed with them.
