Saint of March 29: Santos Jonas and Baraquicio. Catholic Santoral

Today, March 29, the Church commemorates the Santos Jonás and Baraquicio, martyrs. These are two brothers born in Beth-Aas, Persia (today Iran territory), who gave their lives in 327.

The breath of the martyrs

In the eighteenth year of reign of Sapor II, King of Persia, a cruel persecution against Christians in the East began. On real orders, monasteries and temples were razed or burned, while any Christian who profess his faith in public was under threat.

It happened that a group of Christians was captured and sentenced to death. Then, while they remained in the dungeons waiting for the final moment, two brave monks from Beth-IASA approached the place to give them water and food.

Then, when the prisoners were taken to the place where they would be tortured, the monks followed them, and encouraged them with prayers and harangues while suffering the punishments. That day none of those convicted of death abdicated their faith. Those monks were the Jonás and Baraquicio brothers.

There is only one ‘king of kings’

When everything had concluded, a group of Persian soldiers pounced against the brothers and made them prisoners. Then, the person in charge of presiding over the massacre urged them to worship the sun, the moon, the earth and the water.

He also asked them to surrender to the ‘King of Kings’, referring to Sapor, to which the monks responded with a negative, because for them the only King of Kings was Christ, who, unlike Sapor, will never die.

This was a reason for scandal among Persian judges, who called Sapor ‘immortal’. In retaliation, Baraquicio was thrown into a narrow dungeon, while Jonás was whipped and then thrown into an ice water pond.

Both spent the night in those conditions, and then undergo a cruel, quite common game among the sayons (executioners). As the brothers had been separated, the sayons began to “play” cruelly with them.

Baraquicio was told that Jonás had renegated Christ with the purpose of surrendering. The monk ignored such lies and reaffirmed in his faith. Then, for having reacted like this, the judges determined to be beaten with wands of cattle, just like his brother Jonah.

Persia, martyrs land

Finally, Jonah ended up crushed by a press for the vine, and Baraquicio poured hot and lead fish by his mouth. A man named Abdisotas rescued both bodies paying five hundred Daries (the Persian currency of that time) to the soldiers. Then, he gave the Christian Brothers Sevent.

The impressive story of Jonah and Baraquicio, as well as that of the other martyrs of Persia, occurred in times when the edict of Milan was already in force in the West, and the persecutions had stopped. In the East, however, the situation was very different.