Holy Martyr Ascalon

Life

He suffered in Antinoe, a city of Egypt, in the time of Diocletian. He was flogged, scraped, and burned with candles, but he remained unshaken in the faith to the end. When the torturer Arian was crossing the Nile by boat, Ascalon by prayer stopped the boat in the middle of the river and would not let it move until Arian wrote that he believed in Christ as the one and all-powerful God. But attributing this miracle to Ascalon's magical art, the torturer forgot what he had written and continued to torture the man of God thereafter. Finally a stone was tied around Ascalon's neck and he was cast into the River Nile. But on the third day Christians found Ascalon's body on the bank together with the stone around his neck (as the holy martyr had prophesied to them before his death) and honorably buried him in the year 287. The holy martyr Leonidas also suffered with him. And their torturer, Arian, repented later, believed in Christ with all his heart, and publicly began to profess his faith before the pagans. Then the pagans killed him too, and so Arian, the former torturer of Christians, was also deemed worthy of the martyr's crown for Christ.