Before his Baptism, Saint Cyprian was a renowned sorcerer in Antioch of Syria, who worked with the help of demons. Saint Justina the Martyr, a Christian virgin of the same city, brought to nothing, by prayer and by the sign of the cross, all the spells he sent against her. Seeing that the demons flee from the cross, Cyprian turned to Christ in repentance and became a bishop, and in the end he gave his life for Him together with Justina. This is why the Church calls him a “hieromartyr”, as she calls all the martyrs who were bishops or priests.
Their memory is kept on 2 October. In the Churches that follow the old calendar, this day falls on 15 October of the civil calendar. Saint Cyprian of Antioch is not the same person as Saint Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who is commemorated on another day.
The sorcerer of Antioch
Cyprian was born of pagan parents, who dedicated him from childhood to the god Apollo. At seven they gave him to sorcerers, so that he might learn their craft from them. At ten they sent him to offer sacrifices on Mount Olympus, which the pagans held to be the dwelling of the gods.
On the mountain Cyprian learned to raise winds and storms, to blight the crops and to harm people, as far as God permitted the demons who worked through him. There he would fast for forty days at a time, eating only after sunset, and then nothing but acorns. Even as a child, he was placing his abstinence and his toil at the service of the unclean spirits, who sought his ruin.
He then served in the temples of the goddesses Hera and Artemis, and in Lacedaemon, that is, in Sparta, he learned spells and illusions by which he made people believe that the dead were speaking to them from their tombs. At twenty he went to Memphis in Egypt, and at thirty to the Chaldeans, the pagan astrologers of Babylon, who taught him to read the stars.
In the days of the Emperor Decius, in the middle of the third century, Cyprian settled in Antioch. He was by now a master of every kind of wickedness. His Life preserves the confession he made after he came to Christ: he had seen the devil face to face and had spoken with him. The devil had praised him before all the unclean spirits standing around him, and had deceived him with the promise that, once Cyprian left the body, he would make him a prince, and until then would help him in everything. He had also given him a band of demons to serve him.
In the city Cyprian brought many people to perdition. Some he killed with poisons and charms, and others, even children, he slaughtered as sacrifices to the demons. The pagans honoured him as a great sacrificer and a most wise servant of the gods. People came running to him with their passions: some asked his help to satisfy their carnal lust, others to pour out their anger, to stir up enmity or to take revenge.
He had thus come down to the depths of hell while still alive. God, Who does not desire the death of the sinner, was pleased to draw him too out of this abyss. Through him He would show to all that no sin can overcome His love for mankind.
How Justina came to Christ
At the same time there lived in Antioch a virgin named Justina. Her father, Edesius, was a priest of the idols, and her mother was called Cledonia. One day, as she sat at the window, Justina heard the deacon Praylius, who was passing along the street and speaking about our Lord Jesus Christ. He said that He was born of the Virgin Mary, worked many miracles, suffered for our salvation, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
This preaching fell into her heart like seed on good ground and at once began to bear fruit. Justina would have liked to learn more from the deacon, but her maidenly modesty would not let her seek him out. So she went secretly to church and listened there to the word of God. The Holy Spirit was at work in her, and Justina believed in Christ.
Soon she brought her mother to the faith as well. The aged Edesius also began to ask himself how idols made by human hands, which have neither soul nor breath, could be gods. One night he saw in a dream a multitude of light-bearing angels, and in their midst Christ, Who said to him: “Come unto Me, and I will give you the Kingdom of Heaven.” As soon as he awoke, Edesius went with his wife and daughter to Optatus, the Christian bishop of the city. The bishop taught them the faith and baptized all three. Later he ordained Edesius a priest; Edesius lived another year and a half in good works and died in the faith.
Justina loved Christ as her Bridegroom and had consecrated her virginity to Him. She served Him with prayer, with fasting and with great abstinence. The devil could not bear such a life and began to raise temptations and troubles against her.
The young man Aglaides
There was at that time in the city a rich young man named Aglaides, who spent his life in pleasures. When he saw Justina on her way to church, he marvelled at her beauty, and the devil kindled in his heart an impure desire. At first he would wait for her along the road and try to win her with praises and cunning words, but the virgin fled from him. Then he sent word that he wished to take her as his wife. Justina answered: “My Bridegroom is Christ; Him I serve, and for His sake I keep my purity. He guards both my soul and my body from every defilement.”
Unable to persuade her, Aglaides resolved to carry her off. He gathered a few young men as corrupt as himself, and together they lay in wait for her on the road by which she went to prayer. There they seized her and tried to drag her by force to his house. Justina cried out with all her strength, struck Aglaides on the mouth and spat on him. The neighbours ran out of their houses and rescued her from their hands, and the young man went home in shame.
Then he went to Cyprian and promised him much gold and silver if he would help him. Cyprian reassured him and promised that the virgin herself would seek him out and desire him more than he desired her.
The demons sent against the virgin
Cyprian opened his books and summoned an unclean spirit which he knew could quickly kindle carnal desire. The demon boasted before him that he had shaken cities, broken up families, and made even the monks who struggled in the mountains with much fasting fall into fornication. He gave Cyprian a vessel with a potion and told him to send Aglaides to sprinkle Justina’s house with it in secret.
Justina was in the habit of rising every night to pray. That night, as she prayed, she suddenly felt in her body a disturbance and a storm of desire, and the thought of Aglaides gave her no peace. The virgin was astonished and ashamed of herself. But she understood that this war came from the devil. At once she made the sign of the cross and cried out from the depth of her heart to Christ, her Bridegroom: “For Thou knowest, O Lord my God, that I, Thy handmaid, have kept the purity of my body for Thee and have entrusted my soul to Thee.” She besought Him, as the Good Shepherd, to keep His sheep and not to give her up to the beasts that sought to devour her. She persevered long in prayer, until the demon fled in shame. Peace returned to her body and to her heart, and Justina gave glory to God.
The turmoil had come upon her against her will. The Holy Fathers teach that a thought which comes unbidden is not yet sin; a person sins only when he consents to it. In the same way, violence suffered at the hands of others does not defile the soul of one who does not consent to evil.
Defeated, the demon returned to Cyprian. Against his will he told him the truth: he had seen upon the virgin a sign that had filled him with fear.
Cyprian then sent a fiercer demon. Justina defended herself with still more fervent prayer. She clothed herself in a rough garment of hair and humbled her body with fasting, eating nothing but bread and water. This demon too returned defeated.
The third time, Cyprian asked for the help of one of the princes of the demons. This demon took the form of a woman and came in to Justina, pretending to wish to follow her pure life. He began to speak of divine things and asked her what reward she would receive for her virginity. Justina answered that the reward of those who live in purity is great and beyond words. Then the enemy revealed his cunning. He asked her how the human race would have multiplied if Eve had kept her virginity. He also brought up the words of Scripture that honour marriage. They were true words, for God blesses marriage, but the enemy was twisting them to make Justina break the promise she had given to Christ.
Justina at once recognized the deceiver. Her Life says that she overcame him where Eve had been overcome in paradise, for she would not enter into conversation with him. She ran at once to the Cross of Christ as to a harbour: she signed her forehead with the sign of the cross and lifted up her heart to God. The demon vanished in an instant, more ashamed than those before him.
Cyprian asked the great demon with what weapons the virgin defeats the unclean spirits. Compelled by the power of God, the enemy confessed: “We cannot look upon the sign of the cross, but flee from it, for it burns us like fire and drives us far away.”
In these struggles Justina also called upon the Mother of God for help. At Matins, the morning service, the Church dedicates to the saints of the day a canon, that is, a sequence of hymns. The canon of Saints Cyprian and Justina shows that the virgin was strengthened “praying with ardor to the pure and gracious Virgin.”
Saint Gregory the Theologian told of Cyprian’s conversion in a homily delivered in Constantinople around the year 380, in which he weaves Cyprian’s life together with that of Saint Cyprian of Carthage. He says that the virgin whom Cyprian was tempting besought the Virgin Mary to help a virgin in distress, and defended herself by fasting and by sleeping on the bare ground. Saint Gregory is one of the first Holy Fathers to write about prayer to the Mother of God.
Cyprian’s last spells
To console Cyprian, the devil tried one more deception. He took the form of Justina and went in to Aglaides. The young man ran joyfully to embrace her, but when he called her by name, the enemy vanished on the spot, for he could not bear even the name of the one in whom the grace of Christ was at work.
Cyprian then gave Aglaides, by sorcery, the form of a bird and sent him flying to Justina’s window. Just then the virgin looked out. Seeing her, the demon who was carrying him through the air fled, and the illusion vanished. Aglaides caught hold of the edge of the roof with his hands and hung there. He would have fallen and been killed, but through Justina’s prayer he was brought down unharmed.
Enraged by so many defeats, Cyprian turned his spells against Justina’s house, against her relatives and against her neighbours, as the devil had once struck the righteous Job. He killed their cattle and covered their servants with sores. Justina herself he laid low with an illness. Her mother wept beside her, but the virgin comforted her with the words of the psalm: “I shall not die, but live, and recount the works of the Lord” (Psalm 117 [118]:17).
With God’s permission, the demons sent by Cyprian then brought sickness upon the whole city. Through their working, too, a rumour spread that the great sacrificer was punishing Antioch because of the virgin who would not submit to him. Many leading citizens came to Justina in anger and demanded that she marry Aglaides, so that the whole city should suffer no longer on her account. Justina calmed them and told them that the troubles brought by the demons would soon end. She prayed fervently to God, and the power of the devil vanished and all the sick were healed.
At Matins the Synaxarion is also read, a short account of the saints commemorated on that day. Of Justina, the Synaxarion says that she tore apart all the sorcerer’s demonic works like a spider’s web.
The people now glorified Christ and mocked Cyprian and his craft. Cyprian was ashamed to show himself among men.
Cyprian’s conversion
Then Cyprian came to his senses, for he understood that nothing can overcome the sign of the cross and the name of Christ. He rebuked the devil and called him the deceiver of all. He told him that he now knew his weakness: a spirit that fears even the shadow of the cross and trembles at the name of Christ will not be able to stand before Christ Himself. Then he drove him away, telling him that from now on he would run to the Christians himself and beg them to have mercy on him.
The devil hurled himself upon him to kill him. He beat him and began to strangle him, and Cyprian had no one from whom to expect help. Then he remembered the sign of the cross with which Justina had defended herself, and cried out: “O God of Justina, help me!” He raised his hand and made the sign of the cross, and the devil fled from him swift as an arrow. Cyprian took courage, called upon the name of Christ and kept signing himself with the cross. The enemy stood at a distance and no longer dared to come near, but he threatened him: “Christ will not deliver you out of my hands!” Then he went away, roaring like a lion.
Cyprian took all his books of sorcery and ran to Anthimus, the bishop of the Christians. He fell at his feet and begged him to have mercy on him and to baptize him. The bishop knew him as the great sorcerer whom all feared, and thought he had come with some trickery. So he sent him away and advised him not to do among the Christians the evil he was doing among the pagans. Cyprian began to weep and confessed to him all his iniquities. He gave him the books and begged him to burn them. Seeing his humility, the bishop taught him the faith and told him to prepare for Baptism. The books he burned before all the Christians of the city.
Long before, in Ephesus, where the holy Apostle Paul was preaching, some Jews who went about casting out demons tried to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying: “We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.” The evil spirit answered them: “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?”, and the man in whom the spirit was leapt on them and overcame them (Acts 19:13–16). The name of Christ works in those who are His. After this event, many of those who had believed came and confessed their deeds, and “many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men” (Acts 19:19).
Cyprian went home with a broken heart. He wept for his sins, sprinkled ashes on his head and prayed to God to cleanse him. The next day he went into the church and listened with joy to the word of God, standing among the faithful.
In those days, at the Divine Liturgy, the catechumens, that is, those preparing to receive Baptism, left the church when the deacon commanded them, and only the baptized remained inside. When that moment came, the other catechumens went out, but Cyprian stayed where he was and said to the deacon: “I am a servant of Christ; do not drive me out of here.” The deacon answered that he must leave, because he had not yet received Baptism. Then Cyprian said: “As Christ my God lives, Who has delivered me from the devil, kept the virgin Justina pure and had mercy on me, you shall not cast me out of the church until I become a perfect Christian.” By “a perfect Christian” Cyprian meant a Christian born anew through Baptism. The bishop learned what had happened and, recognizing his zeal, baptized him at once in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
When she heard of this, Justina gave thanks to God, distributed much alms to the poor and brought offerings to the church.
Before long the bishop raised Cyprian through the ranks of church service, and after a year he ordained him a priest. Cyprian made his life ever stricter and wept unceasingly for his former deeds. Later he became a bishop and shepherded his flock with wisdom. He made Justina a deaconess and entrusted to her the guidance of a community of virgins consecrated to God. In the first centuries, deaconesses were servants of the Church who assisted women at Baptism and cared for them. Through Cyprian’s life and teaching, many pagans abandoned the idols and came to Christ.
The martyrdom
The devil gnashed his teeth at Cyprian’s zeal for the salvation of men. He stirred up the pagans to denounce Cyprian and Justina to Eutolmius, the governor who ruled at that time in those parts of the East. They accused them of being enemies of the gods and of the emperor, of troubling the people and of leading them to worship Christ the crucified. They demanded that both be punished with death. The governor ordered them to be seized and took them to Damascus to judge them.
There he asked Cyprian why he had cast off the glory he once had as a renowned servant of the gods. Cyprian told him everything in order: how he had come to know the weakness and the deceit of the demons, how he had learned the power of Christ, before Whom all the demons fear and tremble, and how they perish before the sign of the cross. He also told him that he was ready to die for Christ.
The governor did not receive these words into his heart. He ordered Cyprian to be hung up and his body torn, and Justina to be beaten on the mouth and on the eyes. For a long time they were tortured, but they unceasingly confessed Christ and bore their pains with thanksgiving. After keeping them in prison and trying to draw them with gentle words to the worship of idols, they threw them into a cauldron of water set over a fire. The water boiled, but it did them no harm, and they praised God as though they were resting in the cool.
A priest of the idols named Athanasius then said that he too would enter that fire, in the name of the god Asclepius, to put to shame those he took to be sorcerers. As soon as he touched the fire, he died on the spot. Seized with fear, the governor would no longer judge them. He sent them to the emperor at Nicomedia, in Asia Minor, and wrote to him of all that had happened. The emperor condemned them to be beheaded with the sword.
At the place where they were to die, Cyprian asked that Justina be put to death before him, and that a little time for prayer be granted to himself. He feared that the virgin might be terrified on seeing him die. Justina bowed her head beneath the sword with joy and went to her Bridegroom, Christ. Cyprian, who had once sent demons against her, now watched over her, until the hour of death, so that her soul should not waver.
A man named Theoctistus, who was watching this innocent death, was seized with great grief. Kindled with love for God, he knelt beside Cyprian, kissed him and confessed himself a Christian. He was condemned on the spot, and his head was cut off together with Cyprian’s. Thus they gave up their souls into the hands of God.
Their bodies lay unburied for six days. Some strangers took them away in secret and carried them to Rome, where they entrusted them to a devout woman named Rufina, of the family of Claudius Caesar. She buried the martyrs Cyprian, Justina and Theoctistus with honour, and at their tomb many sick people were healed. Portions of their holy relics are found today in many places, among them the monastery dedicated to them at Phyle, near Athens.
The help of Saints Cyprian and Justina
From of old the faithful have run to Saints Cyprian and Justina when the working of the devil troubles them and when they fear sorcery. Their canon sings that the grace that dwelt in Cyprian defeats the hosts of demons and drives away the sufferings of the sick.
Cyprian had relied on books, on potions and on a craft learned over a whole lifetime. Justina had no other weapons than those the Church gives to every believer: prayer and fasting, the sign of the cross, the name of Christ and the help of the Mother of God. Through them she entrusted herself to her Bridegroom, and He worked in her and defended her. Cyprian too had fasted from childhood, but his abstinence, offered to the demons, plunged him ever deeper into darkness.
A hymn from their service addresses Justina: “Countering the spells of the demons with hymns to the Spirit and the sign of the Cross, thou didst preserve thy virginity.” In her struggle were fulfilled the words of the holy Apostle Paul: “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
Saint Athanasius relates in the Life of Saint Antony the Great how Antony once told some pagan philosophers: “Where the sign of the Cross is, magic is weak and witchcraft has no strength.” Then he called upon the name of Christ and signed with the cross some people tormented by demons, who were healed at once. When the philosophers marvelled, Saint Antony said to them: “Why marvel ye at this? We are not the doers of these things, but it is Christ who worketh them by means of those who believe on Him.”
In the Ladder, his book on the ascent of the spiritual life, Saint John Climacus says to one ruled by cowardly fear: “stretch out your hands. Flog your enemies with the name of Jesus, for there is no stronger weapon in heaven or earth.” With this weapon the virgin of Antioch also fought in her nights of prayer.
Cyprian came out of the devil’s bondage through repentance: he confessed his deeds, wept over them and received Baptism. The canon addresses him in these words: “Thou didst pass from the abyss of malice in the nethermost depths to the highest virtue, O father, and didst mount to the summit, having been most gloriously transformed by divine baptism.” The Synaxarion opens with verses that say Satan is pained to see his old friend going lovingly to death by the sword, together with Justina.
Justina overcame the demons without hating the people who persecuted her. She prayed for Aglaides when he hung from the roof of her house, and she prayed for the city that wished to force her into marriage. Cyprian, who once fought against her with sorcery, became her brother in faith and in martyrdom.
Their life calls us to entrust ourselves to Christ in every trouble, without suspecting sorcery in everything that befalls us. Justina cleaved to Him with all her heart, and Cyprian came to Him weeping for his sins, and both found their victory in Him. Christ allowed them to pass through torments and the sword, but He strengthened them in temptations and kept them steadfast unto death.
In their service a kontakion is also sung, that is, a short hymn that gathers up the meaning of the feast. With it the Church prays on the day of their memory:
You turned away from the craft of sorcery, O divinely-wise one, to the knowledge of God, and were shown to the world as a most wise physician, granting healing to those who honor you. O Cyprian and Justina, entreat the Master, the Lover of mankind, that He may save our souls.