Holy Martyrs of Abitina

There were forty-nine of them, and their crime was having met on Sunday. Nothing else. In February 303 Diocletian had issued the first edict against the Christians: destroy the books, close the places of worship, ban the gatherings. In Abitina, a small town in Roman Africa in what is now Tunisia, Bishop Fundanus obeyed and handed the sacred texts over to the authorities. A group of Christians, however, kept meeting anyway, led by the presbyter Saturninus. They were arrested and sent to Carthage, before the proconsul Anullinus. The trial began on February 12, 304, and in the records there are two moments you don’t forget. The first: Dativus, who was a senator, declared that he was a Christian and had taken part in the gatherings, but under torture refused to say who had presided over them. The second is even finer. The defense lawyer Fortunatianus, to save his sister Victoria, argued that she had been talked into it and dragged there by others, naive and not understanding. Victoria contradicted him in front of everyone: she had taken part **of her own free will and in full awareness**. Her brother was offering her a way out, and she turned it down rather than be passed off as a fool. They were all executed. They are remembered together, though almost nothing else is known about nearly any of them. There’s no name day today, but there is a phrase worth keeping: *free will and full awareness*. It’s the opposite of all the excuses we make up every day.