Martyr Azades the Eunuch

Azades, also rendered Azat, was a wealthy eunuch in the household of King Shapur II of Persia who held the king's confidence and favor. According to the synaxarion he was arrested for confessing Christ and put to death together with a thousand other Christians during the great persecution of the Church in Persia in the fourth century. He is commemorated on April 14 as the Martyr Azades the Eunuch and the 1,000 Martyrs of Persia.

The persecution in which Azades died was the most severe endured by the Persian Church, carried out under Shapur II, whose reign extended through much of the fourth century. By tradition the great slaughter is associated with the Paschal season: sources relate that the killing of the thousand fell within the ten days from Great and Holy Friday to New Sunday, and the persecution as a whole is conventionally dated to about the year 341.

Azades occupied a position of trust at court, and tradition holds that his death affected the king personally. The sources relate that when Shapur learned his favorite eunuch had been executed among the Christians, he was so moved that he restrained the persecution, directing thereafter that it fall upon the clergy and the consecrated rather than upon the whole body of the faithful. In this the synaxarion remembers Azades not only as one of a great company of martyrs but as the occasion of a measure of relief for the Persian Church.