Martyr Papylus of Thyatira

Saint Papylus was a deacon of the church of Thyatira and suffered together with his bishop, St. Carpus, the bishop's servant Agathodorus, and Martyr Agathonike, a woman who voluntarily went to the pyre upon witnessing their torment — in the province of Asia, in the city of Pergamum.

The dating of the martyrdom is genuinely disputed in the scholarly literature: the researcher de Guibert places it under Emperor Decius (249–251), while Adolf von Harnack, relying on the testimony of Eusebius of Caesarea, places it under Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180); the Latin redaction of the Life names the presiding proconsul as Optimus (of the Decian era), while the Greek redaction names the proconsul Valerian.

Papylus underwent the same tortures as Bishop Carpus — beaten with iron claws, burned with torches, stoned, thrown onto iron spikes, flayed, forced to run in spiked footwear behind galloping horses — and was finally burned alive on the pyre together with the others. Tradition holds he bore his sufferings with a smile and, to his last moment, urged the pagan onlookers to abandon idol worship.

His feast is kept on October 13/26 (Western tradition: April 13).