Leslie Land clearly had a growing conviction that God was calling him to the ministry, and the letters through the late thirties and the forties trace this. Lloyd-Jones spoke at Land’s induction to Melbourne Hall, Leicester, in 1947 and Land preached quite often at Westminster Chapel through the 1950s. Melbourne Hall continues to exercise a faithful ministry in the heart of Leicester, the most ethnically diverse city in the UK.

Ian Shaw, Professor Emeritus at the School for Business and Society of the University of York, UK, has just done the church a great service by writing a well-researched book on the life of Leslie Land, a rather forgotten pastor in mid-20th-century England who influenced his generation and the next more than most of us could imagine.
The book, Leslie Land: His Life and Ministry, will be published through Joshua Press, an imprint of H&E Publishing, later this year. He has graciously accepted to answer some questions about Leslie Land and this new biography.
What inspired you to write this book?
Well, I guess there may be direct and more distant inspirations. It must have been the early 1950s when, as a little boy, I first heard Leslie Land. I was sixteen when he left his church in Leicester, in the English Midlands. A small group of us went to visit him one Saturday morning, uninvited. It must have been the first time a pastor had talked to me as one Christian to another. I never forgot. When he died after a long illness in 1985, I wrote a couple of obituaries. The seeds were sown.
Over the last decade I have transcribed and published a series of his studies on the second advent of Christ, and written a series of articles about him, but it was the awareness that I had probably the most complete deposit of information about Leslie Land that eventually pushed me to make a fuller record.
Can you give a brief overview of Leslie Land’s life?
The facts – as much as we know them – are readily told. I tell the story in the opening pages of the book. Tracing his life is like a jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces. He was brought up in Derbyshire, an English county. ‘William Leslie Land, born 20 January 1903 at Wirksworth; son of Samuel Land, retired Draper and Outfitter. Educated at the Grammar School, Wirksworth. Admitted 1 March 1921.’ So reads the Christ’s College, Cambridge, Admissions Book.
He became a science teacher at a private college on the south coast of England and quickly rose to be the Headmaster, when still in his thirties. He left the college just after the Second World War and after a brief spell at a church in the south of England was called to Melbourne Hall, Leicester, where he stayed for fourteen years until 1961. He suffered the early onset of a serious degenerative illness and died in 1985. His wife, Katherine, survived him for a few years as did their son, Peter, who himself had lifelong learning and social disabilities.
How difficult was it to gather information for this book?
Katherine Land, who I never spoke to face to face, was shown one of the obits I wrote. She asked someone to mail to me a small number of artefacts from his ministry – his annotated bible, some sermon notes, and so on. Someone else – a man who had been a minister in Leicester at the same time as Land – mailed to me some reel-to-reel tapes of Leslie Land. I felt a kind of obligation.
Another unusual factor is that Melbourne Hall at that time produced a monthly church magazine of sixteen closely typed pages. Three or four of these pages would be taken up with an extended outline of a Leslie Land sermon. The church would bind the magazines between hard covers every three years. I don’t know any other church that would do that. One way or another I was given all but one of the bound volumes covering his ministry. So, although he never wrote anything for publication – despite Martyn Lloyd-Jones urging him to do so – there is a rich archive of his ministry.
Preserving the archive is, as it happens, one of the challenges regarding Leslie Land, and one I have not been able to resolve. I have a significant number of audiotapes of his ministry and have had them digitised, but they need a permanent home.
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The Octavius has come down to us as one of the greatest works of third-century Christian apology, with a clarity, immediacy, and freshness that surpasses the works of other better-known apologists. It also gives a good idea of the arguments Romans wielded against Christian teachings and the prejudices they harbored against Christians, some of which still find uncanny echoes today.

The leisurely walk on the beach Marcus Minucius Felix took with his friends Octavius and Cecilius sometimes between the second and third century is reminiscent of the walk J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Hugo Dyson took on the grounds of Oxford University in 1931. In both cases, an open discussion of topics related to faith in Christ generated a spark leading to a conversion.
Three Men on the Italian Shore
Marcus Minucius Felix was probably born in North Africa, a region where Christianity had rapidly developed since its earliest days. His name, as well as the names of his friends, had been found on inscriptions in that region.
Of Minucius’s works, only the Octavius, describing the conversation between these two friends, has come down to us. But it has been sufficient to place Minucius among the greatest rhetoricians of ancient Rome.
No one knows if this conversation actually happened, and if it did in exactly this format, but it doesn’t matter. From its first pages, the reader is taken to the beach in Ostia, the main port near Rome, and is immediately immersed in the experience.
It was early morning on a mild autumn day, when the fierce heat of summer has passed, and the three men decided to take advantage of a brief holiday from their busy lives as lawyers to walk along the shore, so “that both the breathing air might gently refresh our limbs, and that the yielding sand might sink down under our easy footsteps with excessive pleasure.”[1]
Both Minucius and Octavius were converts to Christianity, and this common experience had strengthened their long-standing friendship. Octavius was in Rome temporarily, partially to visit Minucius, who was grateful for his friend’s sacrifice in leaving his family at a time when children are most charming, “while yet their innocent years are attempting only half-uttered words.”[2]
Cecilius, who lived in Rome as a close associate to Minucius, was a firm believer in the Roman religious traditions. The reader is immediately aware of this reality when the three pass by an image of Serapis, an Egyptian god which had become popular in Rome, and Cecilius raises his hand to his mouth and presses a kiss – a gesture of devotion.
This act makes Octavius uncomfortable. Annoyed by Minucius’s apparent indifference, he tells him that friends don’t let friends worship stones.
The camera moves back to the seashore, where the gentle breeze crisped and curled the waves while shaping the sand into a leveled walkway. The soft, fleeting touch of the water on their feet before “retiring and retracing its course”[3] managed to distract Octavius, who began to tell stories on navigation. And the excitement of a group of kids who gesticulated while skipping smooth shells on the water caught both his and Minucius’s curiosity.
But Cecilius was not easily distracted. Offended by Octavius’s suggestion that he had to be rescued from religious ignorance, he could only think of the many arguments he wanted to retort against him.
Concerned about the friend’s distress, Minucius and Octavius agreed to sit on some rocks and hear Cecilius’s reasons. Since Minucius knew both men well, he was chosen to sit in the middle as moderator in the ensuing debate.
Cecilius’s Arguments Against Christianity
Cecilius started his arguments with rational considerations. If all things in human affairs are uncertain and the universe seems to function without rhyme or reason, how can Christians, who are mostly unlearned, pretend to know the truth about God and life? And how could one single God take care of all human events? Besides, if he really ruled over all, why would he allow unjust men to rise to power and just men to be killed, ot allow vital crops to be destroyed?
In uncertainty, Cecilius said, it is best to stick with traditional religions that have stood the test of time. For example, the Romans, with their religious system, had conquered the world. Who would save Christians? A criminal who was executed by crucifixion? He was obviously not providing much help, given that many Christians were poor and miserable.
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Bede tells us “her prudence was so great that not only indifferent persons but even kings and princes asked and received her advice.” In fact, “all who knew her called her Mother.” And her influence spread much beyond Whitby. “For her singular piety and grace,” Bede continues, “was not only an example of good life to those that lived in her monastery, but afforded occasion of amendment and salvation to many who lived at a distance, to whom the fame was brought of her industry and virtue.”[7]

The name of Hilda of Whitby is almost legendary in English history. She ran two abbeys, educated some of the finest minds in England (including five bishops), discovered and sponsored the first English poet, and convened the crucial Synod of Whitby. Her authority and accomplishments are especially impressive when we think that Christianity was still quite new in England.
Hilda’s Early Life
Hilda was born in a renowned family around the year 614. Her father, Hereric, was a prince of the royal family of Deira (whose territories covered approximately modern Yorkshire). He was also a nephew of King Edwin of Northumbria, who is usually considered the first Anglo-Saxon Christian king.[1]
While Hilda was still a baby, her mother Bregusuit had a dream where she was looking for her husband and couldn’t find him. Instead, she found a precious jewel under her gown, which “cast such a light as spread itself throughout all Britain.”[2] That jewel represented Hilda – although her mother might not have lived to see its fulfillment.
Bregusuit’s dream was correct about the loss of her husband, who was at that time living in exile at the court of Cerdic, king of the Britons. She couldn’t find her husband because he had been poisoned. Due to these dangers, Hilda was brought up at King Edwin’s court, where she encountered Christianity and was baptized, together with Edwin and many of his court, on Easter Day 627.
We don’t know anything about Hilda’s life between then and 647, when she decided to move to a monastery in France where her sister Hereswith lived. She might have been married and become a widow. In any case, Aidan of Lindisfarne, an important Irish bishop and missionary to England[3], noticing “her innate wisdom and inclination to the service of God,”[4] advised her to join the monastery of Hartlepool instead.
The monastery of Hartlepool, a port town in County Durham, had gained a notable reputation for the devotion and learning of its members. Founded jointly by Aidan and one of his disciples, Heiu, provided a place of training for Hilda, who by that time (possibly the year 647) was already 33 years old.
Teacher and Influencer
A natural leader, Hilda became abbess of Hartlepool in 649, when Heiu moved elsewhere. In 657, she moved on to become the abbess of a community of both men and women at a seaside town in Yorkshire known as Streaneshalch (later called Whitby by the Vikings). Due to her connection to royal families, she soon became the preceptor for many young men and women of the nobility.
According to Bede, who devoted many pages to Hilda’s life and accomplishments, she placed both monasteries “under the same regular discipline,” teaching “the strict observance of justice, piety, chastity, and other virtues, and particularly of peace and charity; so that, after the example of the primitive church, no person was there rich, and none poor, all being in common to all, and none having any property.”[5]
Five of her pupils became bishops.
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Letting God decide the future of each soul freed Prosper to preach to others without wondering whether or not they were of the elect. He was in fact one of the first Christian voices to speak of bringing Christ outside the Roman Empire, and his De vocatione omnium gentium (“The Call of All Nations”), was the first Christian book to support this idea. “Today there are in the remotest parts of the world some nations who have not yet seen the light of the grace of the Saviour,” he wrote. “But we have no doubt that in God’s hidden judgment, for them also a time of calling has been appointed, when they will hear and accept the Gospel which now remains unknown to them.”[7]

The fourth-century debate between Augustine of Hippo and Pelagius left a profound mark in church history, with Pelagius’s views condemned as heresy at the ecumenical council of Ephesus in 431. In a nutshell, Augustine explained that, because of the Fall, human beings are incapable of redeeming themselves and depend totally on God’s grace. Pelagius instead believed that God has endowed human beings with the ability to choose to obey God and to resist sin.
Augustine’s position led to a belief in predestination, since if God is the only agent in redemption, he is also the only one who can determine who will be saved. Those who believed that God’s grace was preeminent in salvation but were not ready to deny the importance of human agency often adopted the belief that the original sin had only a limited effect on human abilities and that man could contribute to his salvation by cooperating with God’s grace.
Augustine’s teachings continued to have many supporters. Among these was Prosper of Aquitaine, a poet and lay theologian who lived in Marseilles, France, in the fifth century, when these doctrines of grace were most fiercely debated. He is considered the author of the expression “semi-Pelagian” to denote anyone who tried to reach a compromise between Augustine and Pelagius.
The Development of Prosper’s Views
We know very little about Prosper’s life. He lived in Marseilles when some foreign populations such as the Vandals and the Goths were making their way into France. In fact, he was there when the Goths invaded the city and was taken prisoner for some time.
In a long poem entitled De Providentia Dei (Of God’s Providence), Prosper expressed his pain in seeing the devastation of his city. “O happy the man whom God has given such a power to live free from cares at a time like this! Who is not shaken by the heap of ruins all around him, remaining intrepid amids the flames and flood. But we, the weak ones, under such a tempest of evil, are cut down everywhere, and we fall. Each time the image of our fatherland, all in smoke,
comes to our mind, and the whole range of destruction stands before our eyes, we break down, and the tears water our cheeks beyond restraint.”[1]
Prosper wrote De Providentia Dei when possibly still young in the faith, as a possible explanation of why God allowed such suffering. After a long discussion, he concluded that disasters were part of God’s punishment of evildoers, and that Christians were inevitably caught in them. At this time, his understanding of God’s grace was still limited by his emphasis on man’s free will.
Sometimes later, however, he was introduced to the writings of Augustine of Hippo (possibly by a deacon named Leontius), and became thoroughly convinced of their orthodoxy and authority. In a later letter, he described Augustine as “the first and foremost among the bishops of the Lord” and “the greatest man in the church today.”[2] He was certain that “the church of Rome and of Africa and all the sons of the promise the world over agree with the teaching of this doctor both in the faith and in particular in the doctrine of grace.”[3]
Denouncing the Semi-Pelagians
It was then only natural that, when some opposition to Augustine’s doctrines became vocal in his region, Prosper sent letters to Augustine, asking him to intervene. And he was not the only one. Another young supporter of Augustine, Hilary, did the same.
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If Augustine was not the first to bring Christianity to England, he was the first to be sent on an official mission by a Roman pope and the first to be appointed as archbishop of Canterbury. He was also the first to adopt Gregory’s method of “recycling” pagan places and rites for Christian purposes. This was not a wholly new practice (Roman buildings, names, and rites had been recycled before), but Gregory’s imprimatur and Augustine’s example contributed to its diffusion.

Augustine of Canterbury, often known as “the apostle of the English,” would have never made it across the Channel if it hadn’t been for the insistent prompting of Pope Gregory I.
The eighth century historian Bede tells us in fact that Augustine and his companions were “seized with a sudden fear” after hearing tales about the “barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation to whose language they were strangers.” In unanimous agreement, they sent Augustine back to Rome to beg Gregory to spare them from “so dangerous, toilsome, and uncertain a journey.”[1]
Gregory and Augustine had known each other for some time, since Augustine had served as prior at Gregory’s family monastery of St. Andrew’s in Rome. Gregory held Augustine in great esteem, but was not about to let him off so easily. He sent him back to his companions, but sent letters to bishops and kings in France asking them to supply the missionaries with whatever they needed. He also made sure Augustine could able to find some interpreters who spoke the language of the Anglo-Saxons.
Augustine and his team of about forty monks landed in the Isle of Thanet (a peninsula in the east of Kent, southern England) in the spring of 597.
Augustine and Ethelbert
Augustine told Ethelbert, king of Kent, that they had come to bring “a joyful message, which most undoubtedly assured to all that took advantage of it everlasting joys in heaven and a kingdom that would never end with the living and true God.”
Ethelbert received the missionaries warmly, although he kept them outdoors. Bede tells us the king was afraid that, inside a building, they could cast some magical spells. This is unlikely, since, as Bede himself confirms, he had learned about Christianity by his Frankish wife of 15 years, Bertha. In fact, Bertha’s parents gave her to Ethelbert on condition that she could continue to practice her religion with the assistance of her confessor, Bishop Luidhard. Ethelbert gave her an older church building, St. Martin’s, for her worship.
In any case, Ethelbert was cautious. “Your words and promises are very fair,” he said, “but as they are new to us, and of uncertain import, I cannot approve of them so far as to forsake that which I have so long followed with the whole English nation.”[2]
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Ambrose is often depicted as the flogger of heretics or the subjugator of rulers. In reality, he was meek and gentle, as his writings show. His treatise on repentance, for example, begins with this advice: “If the highest end of virtue is that which aims at the advancement of most, gentleness is the most lovely of all, which does not hurt even those whom it condemns, and usually renders those whom it condemns worthy of absolution.”

If you visit downtown Milan, Italy, besides viewing the most popular monuments, such as the Duomo and the Sforza Castle, you may want to walk a mile out of the way to explore an older church named after a fourth-century bishop, Ambrose. You’ll see a mosaic depicting him as a small, unassuming man dressed in drab colors–quite a contrast with the altar of gold built a few centuries later in his honor. And yet, it was this seemingly unassertive man who resisted the orders of an empress and caused an emperor to walk in penitence through the city’s streets.
Ambrose’s Early Life
Ambrose was born in Trier, in today’s Germany, around the year 339, to a Christian family from Rome. His full name was Aurelius Ambrosius.
Being a prefect of Rome in Gaul, Ambrose’s father directed his son toward a political career. Ambrose’s studies in Trier and Rome allowed him to become first a lawyer, then a magistrate. Valentinian I, who was emperor at that time, was so impressed by Ambrose’s abilities as a mediator that in 370 he made him governor of the Roman provinces in northern Italy, with a seat in Milan (the capital of the western empire). Ambrose was only 24 years old.
Milan a large city, second only to Rome in the western Roman Empire. As it was typical after Constantine’s edict of 313, its population professed to be Christian. But their views of Christianity differed sharply. On one side, there were those who adhered to the Nicene Creed as it was expounded, in its early form, at the 325 Council of Nicea. On the other side were the followers of Arius, the priest who advanced the idea that Jesus was not fully God.
The bishop of Milan, Auxentius, stood with the Arians. Born in Cappadocia (in today’s Turkey), he alienated much of the population by refusing to speak Latin, the local language, and by arriving at the bishopric with the backing of the Arian emperor Constantius. At his death in 374, the Nicene Christians saw an opportunity to replace him with a man who would abide by the decisions of the Council of Nicea.
Ambrose’s early biographer, Paulinus, tells us that both factions were arguing inside a church when Ambrose walked in to bring peace. As he was used to do, he encouraged a peaceful discussion. Suddenly a child shouted, “Ambrose for bishop!” The majority – including Arians – joined in this petition.
Being bishop was the furthest thing from Ambrose’s mind. He wasn’t even baptized, let alone ordained to any office in the church. (This was not for lack of faith, but because, at that time, many postponed baptism as long as possible). He pleaded with the emperor to dissuade the people, but Valentinian was happy to have a bishop he trusted. He even made an unsuccessful attempt to leave Milan.
Hurried through baptism and a succession of ordinations, Ambrose had to be catechized while called to teach. This seemed like a recipe for disaster, but Ambrose proved to be not only a good bishop, but a wise theologian. Faithful to the Council of Nicea, he defended the orthodox position in his sermons, writings, and songs.
His tutor was Simplicianus, a man who was also instrumental in Augustine of Hippo’s conversion. In his Confessions, Augustine gives us a glimpse of Ambrose fixed to his studies, whenever he could get away from his many duties, while “his eyes glanced over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense.”[1] Well-learned in Greek, he could read the Greek Scriptures as well as all the church fathers.
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Much of Turretin’s work was aimed at protecting the church from what he considered the greatest doctrinal threats—Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, and Amyrauldianism—and encouraging Christians to stay faithful to Scriptures. 

Francis, the third of the seven children of Benedetto and Louise Turretin[1], was born on October 17, 1623 and named after his paternal grandfather. Recognizing the boy’s exceptional intelligence, Benedetto encouraged his studies. But Benedetto died when Francis was only seven, and Louise became the most important figure in Francis’s life—as later correspondence attests.
Studies and Travels
After studying at the Geneva Academy under renowned teachers such as Giovanni Diodati and Theodore Tronchin, Turretin traveled to some of the best European university of that time, spending time Leiden, Utrecht, Paris, Saumur, Montauban, and Nîmes.
Antoine Leger, pastor and professor in Geneva, was concerned about Turretin’s inevitable exposure to heterodox theological views (such as the widespread Socinianism), but advised him to treat others with charity.
Turretin did, in fact, come into contact with many different ideas. He became particularly acquainted with Amyrauldianism, a system of doctrines that, with a belief in hypothetical universalism, was considered very akin to Arminianism. In fact, Turretin became friends with a sympathizer of this system, Jean Daillé, and continued to correspond with him for the rest of his life – maybe remembering the reminder Leger had given him: “intimate friendship enjoys hours of constant strain.”[2]
A Pastor’s Heart
As soon as Turretin returned to Geneva in 1647, the city’s Company of Pastors proposed that he should seek ordination. After he passed the required exams, he was appointed to the ministry and called to serve as pastor of the Italian church. But, before the actual laying of hands, he requested two weeks to think it over. Apparently, he disliked being pressured. Once, when he felt pressured to serve as a professor at the Academy, he even asked to withdraw his consent to ordination.
Before Turretin began his pastorate in the the Italian church, the Company of Pastors received a letter from the church in Lyon, asking them to send Turretin to them “on loan” as a pastor. They had met Turretin before, during one of his travels. The Company refused, and in 1549 Turretin was ordained as pastor of the Italian church in Geneva.
Turretin took his ministry seriously, refusing an appointment to the Chair of Philosophy at the Academy, since his pastorate was taking all of his time. In 1652, however, the church in Lyon repeated their request. To convince Turretin to answer their call, the elders of that church wrote a letter to Turretin’s mother, asking her to encourage her son to accept (another indication of her influence on him). The letter was delivered by two ambassadors who insisted on the urgency of the matter. A plea also came from Turretin’s friend Daillé, who was sincerely concerned about the situation in Lyon at that time.
Moved by the urgency of the matter but hesitant to let Turretin go, the Company of Pastors agreed to send him for three or four months. The three months turned to ten, and still the church in Lyon was begging him to stay indefinitely. Eventually, the Company of Pastors requested him back.
The church and the city of Lyon, sad to see him leave, composed a poem of gratitude in his honor, naming him “star of the morning, beautiful and dawning dawn…blessed man of God, offspring of a worthy father, mouth of gold…heart inflamed with love for faithful souls, charitable, zealous, enemy of the rebels, rich vase where all goods are amply kept.”
“Maybe our faults have caused this loss, but who was not moved by your eloquent mouth?…Farewell, rising sun, farewell. The whole church, regretting your departure and missing your exquisite doctrine, says good-bye, with full affection.”[3]
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 In 2008, the University of Padova erected a memorial plaque in Algerio’s honor, remembering how he was arrested and executed “for his religious beliefs, which he inflexibly defended” and how he “faced the stake with exceptional composure and courage.”

Most tourists to Rome stop by Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers, in Piazza Navona. Some drop a coin in the water and make a wish. Hardly anyone is aware that in the same square a young Italian man was boiled in a cauldron of oil, pitch, and turpentine for his religious convictions. And yet, the man’s young age, stubborn refusal to recant, and astonishing composure during that final, agonizing ordeal, have contributed to imprint his name in the history of the Protestant Reformation.
Algerio was born around 1531 in Nola, near Naples, Italy – the same birth-place of another famous dissenter, Giordano Bruno. That general area was also where a Spanish Reformer, Juan De Valdes, held a Protestant-leaning conventicle. Quite possibly, Algerio had already been exposed to dissenting ideas by the time he moved to the university of Padova (or Padua, as it is known outside of Italy).
In Padova, he lived with other students and professionals (including a physician and a jurist and his wife) near Porta Portello, the main city gate. More than simple room-mates, these people shared a desire to read new publications and join recent discussions.
It was not unusual. The University of Padova was known for its free exchange of ideas (which might have been a reason why Algerio moved there). The Italian Reformers Pier Paolo Vergerio and Peter Martyr Vermigli were famous alumni.
All this changed in 1555 with the election (by a slight margin) of Gian Pietro Carafa as pope, with the name of Paul IV. The mastermind behind the 1542 re-institution of the Italian Court of Inquisition, Carafa was determined to stamp out any ember of dissent. He was quoted as saying, “If our own father were a heretic, we would gather the wood to burn him.”[1]
Little is known about Algerio and his life. He is simply described as a young man with a short blond beard. From a court deposition, it appears that he was married. He was arrested in his home on May 9, 1555 and sent to the prison called “Le Debite” (“the dues” – originally meant for those who could not pay their debts), near the university.
Refusing to Budge
During three trials held in Padova between May and July 1555, Algerio didn’t pull any punches. He started by saying he didn’t know why he was being tried. “I declare as true the triune God in whom I place all my trust, and likewise confess Jesus Christ as true God and true man,”[2] he said. If he was in error, he was willing to be corrected, as long as the correction was according to the Scriptures, paraphrasing the Apostle Paul who warned the Galatians not to believe anyone – even an apostle of an angel of God – who preached something contrary to God’s Word.[3]
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The first person to be tortured was the senator Dativus who, due to his position, was thought to have been an instigator (Fortunatianus had placed the blame on him). While Dativus was being prepared for torture, another Christian, Thelica, stepped forward to clarify that the meeting was a collective decision: “We are Christians. It was we who came together.” As expected, Thelica was the next to be placed on the rack. While torn apart by iron claws, he alternated prayers for his persecutors with exhortations.

“Sine dominico non possumus” (“We can’t do without the Lord’s Day”). This was the answer of a group of 49 Christians (31 men and 18 women) who were arrested for participating in a Lord’s Day service. They lived in or around Abitina, a city in today’s Tunisia which was at that time under Rome. It was the year 304, and Emperor Diocletian had launched an empire-wide persecution against Christians, forbidding their meetings, destroying their churches, and demanding them to hand over (tradere) their Scriptures.
Defying the emperor’s orders, this group, led by their presbyter Saturninus, continued to meet secretly for worship in private homes. Discovered and arrested, they were sent to Carthage, about 50 miles away, to be tried by proconsul Gaius Annius Anulinus.
Commenting on this arrest, the author of the Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs[1] – most likely an eye-witness – wrote: “As if a Christian could exist without the Lord’s Day, or the Lord’s Day exist without a Christian celebration! Do you not know, Satan, that the Christian is based on the Lord’s Day, and the Lord’s Day is based on a Christian, so that the one cannot survive without the other? When you hear the phrase ‘Lord’s Day,’ understand that it means the assembly of the Lord. And when you hear the bell ring, recognize that it is the Lord’s Day.”[2]
On their way to Carthage, the Christians encouraged each other by singing hymns. Once there, they unanimously refused to renounce their faith. Imprisoned, they were denied food, while any supporter who tried to bring supplies was sent away. This measure gave way to a small brawl outside the prison.
A Collective Decision
When an eager relative, Fortunatianus, rushed to rescue his sister Victoria by claiming that she and a few other women had been deceived, Victoria rose in protest. She had attended worship of her own free will and with full knowledge of what she was doing, she said. Fortunatianus should have known better. She had previously refused an arranged marriage by escaping through a window.
Moved by this family exchange, Anulinus tried to convince Victoria to listen to her brother. “I am a Christian, and my brothers are those who keep God’s commandments,” she replied. “These are my convictions, and I have never changed them. If I have participated to the Sunday service with my brothers and sisters, it is because I am a Christian.”[3]
Augustine of Hippo, writing a century later, gives a specific date for their trial: February 12, 304.
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The only reason we know about these women is because of some letters by Chrysostom which have been preserved…But there are certainly many other women who have made invaluable contributions to the church, although they may never be remembered in this life.

Some time ago, I wrote about Olympias, a widow of noble birth who became one of John Chrysostom’s greatest supporters. But she was not alone. She lived in a community of women near the Great Church in Constantinople – in fact, only a wall separated their home from the bishop’s residence. Each of these women is worth of our attention.
We know some of them by name. Three sisters, Palladia, Elisanthia, and Martyria, were related to Olympias and, like her, were appointed deaconesses. When, after Chrysostom’s exile and death, Olympias was exiled, she left Marina in charge of the community. Later, Elisanthia took her place.
A noblewoman from Bithinia, Nicarete, joined the community after her husband died and after suffering an unjust confiscation of many of her goods. She devoted the rest of her property to help the poor. She is also remembered for healing many who would not be healed by conventional medicine. Apparently, she refused Chrysostom’s offer to appoint her as a deaconess.
When Chrysostom received the verdict that condemned him to exile, he called three of the deaconesses – Olympias, Pentadia, and Procla – as well as another woman, Salvina, to the baptistery, asked for their prayers, and instructed them to respect his successor, as long as he was properly elected and not seeking power. The women’s weeping at the news was so loud that Chrysostom asked a presbyter to escort them to their home, to avoid attacting the attention of the people outside.
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