The life of Nine Martyrs at Cyzicus
Over several days of questioning and torture they were repeatedly pressed to renounce Christ, offered freedom each time they refused, and returned each time to prison. The nine, sentenced across the years from roughly 286 to 299 rather than in a single episode, were beheaded and buried near the city. Their graves remained largely undisturbed until 324, when Constantine's edicts had finally ended the empire's persecution of Christians; the community of Cyzicus then opened the graves, found the bodies preserved, and placed them together in a church built to hold their relics, where the sick and those in distress of mind were reported healed. Little beyond the bare list of their names, occupations, and this account of their end has come down about any one of them individually; they are remembered as a company rather than through separate stories.
