Unmercenary Damian of Arabia

The Holy Unmercenary Martyr Damian of Arabia (Cilicia), twin brother of St. Cosmas, was a physician of the late 3rd–early 4th century who healed the sick without charge in the name of Christ in the borderland between Arabia and Cilicia.

Together with Cosmas and their three younger brothers — Leontius, Anthimus, and Eutropius — Damian was arrested by order of the governor Lysias for preaching the Christian faith and refusing to sacrifice to idols. His tormentors cast the saints into the sea, from which an angel delivered them, threw them into fire, shot them with arrows, and stoned them, yet fire, arrows, and stones caused them no harm and turned back upon the persecutors instead.

Seeing the torments were futile, Lysias ordered Damian, Cosmas, and the three brothers beheaded with the sword; their martyrdom is dated to 287 or 303, during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian.

The Church keeps the feast of the Martyr Damian of Arabia together with his brother Cosmas and the martyrs Leontius, Anthimus, and Eutropius on October 17/30; tradition holds that the sword of their execution is preserved in the German city of Münster, with portions of their relics known in Essen, Munich, Bremen, Madrid, and Rome.

NOTE: this is the THIRD canonical Cosmas-and-Damian pair in this database, distinct from the Roman pair (see martyr_cosmas) and the Asia Minor pair (see martyr_cosmas_2). This entry is also distinct from martyr_damian, which was re-identified as an entirely different saint — Venerable Damian the Healer of the Kiev Caves.