Hieromartyr Alexander of Side

Life and Martyrdom

Side, in the Roman province of Pamphylia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, was the setting of Alexander's ministry as a priest. The sources place his death in the persecution of the emperor Aurelian, whose reign fell between 270 and 275, locating Alexander among the martyrs of the pre-Nicene Church.

When the ruler Antoninus came to Side, he summoned Alexander to be questioned. Asked who he was, Alexander declared that he was a Christian and a priest, a shepherd of Christ's rational flock, and confessed Christ as the Savior of the world. He defended the divinity and resurrection of Christ before his judge and would not offer sacrifice to idols.

The synaxarion describes a sequence of tortures inflicted upon him, among them scourging, the wheel, a vessel of boiling resin and oil, and a fiery furnace, from which the accounts say he emerged unharmed. He was also given over to wild beasts, which the tradition relates did not touch him. After these torments he was put to death by beheading.

Tradition of the Persecutor

The hagiographical tradition adds that the ruler who condemned Alexander did not long outlive his sentence. As recounted in the synaxarion, Antoninus was seized as he left his judgment seat and died shortly afterward, before he could reach his own house.

Veneration

Alexander is commemorated on March 15, the date on which the Orthodox Church remembers him together with other martyrs of that day. The Prologue of Ohrid lists him for the same date as a martyr of Side, while the synaxarion preserves his rank as a hieromartyr, a priest who died for Christ.