Mission and Confession
The three brothers reached adulthood and entered the service of the Persian king Alamundar, who sent them as diplomatic representatives to conclude a peace treaty with the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, who reigned from 361 to 363. Julian at first received the envoys respectfully and with due honor.
His attitude changed when the brothers declined to participate in the pagan religious rituals that accompanied the negotiations. The synaxarion relates that they explained they had come on behalf of their king to discuss matters of state, not questions of religion. Julian nonetheless annulled the peace agreement and had the brothers imprisoned as common criminals rather than treated as ambassadors, demanding that they renounce their Christian faith.
Martyrdom
When the brothers remained steadfast, Julian ordered them severely tortured: their limbs were nailed to trees, iron spikes were driven into their heads, and sharp splinters were forced beneath the nails of their fingers and toes. The account relates that the saints glorified God and prayed as though they did not feel the torments. They were ultimately beheaded in 362.
Julian ordered their bodies burned. According to the synaxarion, an earthquake followed and the earth swallowed their remains; after Christians prayed for two days, the earth gave the bodies back, and they emanated a sweet fragrance. This was held to have converted many pagans to Christianity. The brothers' death falls within Julian's reign and before his Persian military campaign, which began in March 363 and ended with his death on June 26 of that year.
Legacy
By tradition, the Persian king Alamundar later defeated Julian's forces in battle after learning of the murder of his envoys. In 395, thirty-three years after the brothers' deaths, the emperor Theodosius the Great built a church in their honor at Constantinople.
The hieromonk Germanos, later Patriarch of Constantinople, composed a canon in honor of the three brothers.
