Martyr
Martyr Stephen
The identity of the Martyr Stephen depicted here (a scene of mass burning inside a building) could not be established with confidence — the image likely depicts a participant in a group martyrdom, distinct from Stephen the Protomartyr and Stephen the New, already documented in the database as separate entries.
IMPORTANT NOTE: this stub originally carried the same contaminated date list (7 variants) as the already-resolved entries martyr_stephen_the_protomartyr and martyr_stephen_the_new in our database, but its sole image (a gold-background miniature depicting a group of people being burned inside a building) does not match either of those two saints.
Thorough checking could not establish which specific Stephen this image depicts. The most plausible hypothesis is that this miniature illustrates the tradition of the ~20,000 Martyrs of Nicomedia, burned in the city's church by order of Emperor Maximian on December 28 (the day immediately after Stephen the Protomartyr's main feast of December 27, which could have led to a mix-up between adjacent menologion folios) — however, none of the known named participants of that group (Bishop Anthimus, Dorotheos, Glycerius, Zeno, Theophilus, Mardonius, Migdonius, Indes, Gorgonius, Peter, Euphemius, Secundus, Nicostratus, Domna, Agathia, Theophila, Antonina) bears the name Stephen.
Given the absence of a reliable identification, this entry is kept honestly undetermined, without inventing an identity.