Venerable Martyr Vadim (Bademus) of Persia

The Hieromartyr Vadim (Bademus) of Persia was born in the 4th century in the Persian city of Bethlapat, into a wealthy and noble family. He distributed his possessions and withdrew into the desert, where he founded a monastery at his own expense and lived a life of fasting and prayer, once being granted a vision of the Glory of God on a mountain where he went for solitary prayer. He gathered disciples around him and raised them in strict piety. When the Persian King Shapur II launched a fierce persecution of Christians, Saint Vadim was seized together with seven of his disciples and thrown into prison. For four months he was tortured and pressed to renounce Christ and worship the sun and fire, but he remained unshaken. His execution was entrusted to the nobleman Nirsan, a Christian who had apostatized under torture; rebuked by the saint for his cowardice, the trembling Nirsan needed four blows of the sword to behead him, after which he took his own life in despair and remorse.