Arrest and Martyrdom
After the group was discovered, the authorities arrested Julian and pressed him to reveal where his companions were hiding, but he refused to betray them. Ordered to make pagan sacrifices, he rejected the demand and was subjected to severe torture. According to the accounts, he was stripped and placed upon a red-hot iron grate; the tradition relates that an angel cooled the flames so that he emerged unharmed, declaring himself a servant of God.
The persecutors then brought forward Julian's elderly mother, threatening to torture her unless she persuaded her son to renounce his faith. By tradition she answered with courage, holding that a defilement forced upon her would be martyrdom rather than sin. Julian was at length put to death by beheading.
The Forty Companions
The forty Christians who had shared Julian's hiding place are said to have heard a heavenly voice summoning him to heaven. Emboldened by this, they came out of hiding, openly confessed themselves Christians, and were arrested. By order of the governor they too were beheaded, and they are commemorated together with Julian as the Forty Martyrs who suffered with him.
Identity and Sources
Julian of Galatia is commemorated on September 12 and is distinct from the Hieromartyr Julian of Ancyra commemorated on September 13. The OCA Synaxarion places him as a presbyter of the region near Ancyra in Galatia in the fourth century, within the Pre-Nicene era. Some accounts associate the persecution with the reign of Diocletian (284–305) and name a governor Antoninus as the persecutor.
The Prologue of Ohrid records the company as the Holy Martyr Julian with forty companions, suffering around the year 300 by torture and beheading, and locates the martyrdom in Galatia, the region near Ancyra (modern Ankara). The same accounts preserve a prayer attributed to Julian before his death, in which he asked that those who came to his burial place receive forgiveness of sins and freedom from their passions, and that the fields of such people be spared from destructive birds, insects, and blight.
