The Emperor Diocletian is considered to be one of the most brutal emperors in history against those of the Christian religion. Many people in the world today, including many historians, regard him as a great man, one who brought order to the empire and a sense of dignity to all of his subjects. Well, we’re not here to speak about the things he may have done in his own statecraft, but in terms of the Christians he inaugurated what has been known in history as the Great Persecution.

Diocletian is someone who was poor and was raised to become a soldier, as many of the emperors actually were. When he came to power in the year 284—and his reign would last until 305—he immediately began to consolidate his power by a series of very stringent rules. He essentially made himself a god. He was someone who decked himself out in the royal purple and all kinds of jewelry from all over the Far East. If you approached him, it had to be on your knees, and then when you came closer to him, you had to be making a full prostration with your head to the ground before him. He was very strict about this, and this is one of the ways he supposedly brought order to his society.

He was married to a woman that we are speaking of today, his wife, Alexandra, the holy and great martyr, who would end up reposing in the year 304. Now, Alexandra was converted to the true faith especially through the actions of the holy great martyr and trophy-bearer, St. George. She witnessed many of the things that George underwent, because he had come before her husband and also proclaimed the faith, whereas then he was subjected to innumerable and horrendous tortures. But miraculously, after each one of them—and there were maybe four or five major things that Diocletian did to him—he was healed each time. Alexandra observed this, and in her heart she knew that Christ was the true God, because how else could George, who was confessing Jesus Christ, have survived all of these things?

Diocletian eventually, after all of these tortures, decided to take another tack with St. George. He said: Why don’t you become part of my administration? George didn’t really answer him, but agreed to go with him to the temple of Jupiter. When they got there, George then made the sign of the cross over the giant statue, the giant idol of Jupiter, and the demons there that were behind that idol fled, and the statue came crashing to the ground. Diocletian was very upset with this, and Alexandra knew that something was going on inside that temple. She was in the crowd, and she was rushing to try and see St. George, and she finally was allowed into the temple because of who she was. When she got there, she confessed before her husband that she, too, was a disciple of Jesus Christ and that she worshiped him as true God.

Diocletian was completely perplexed at this. He really didn’t know what to do; it put him in quite a spot. So he took George and his wife and put them in the same cell. George himself witnessed overnight that Alexandra became very restless and fatigued and tired, and she lay down on a stone slab. Not long after that, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was not going to subject her to the same things that he had subjected his faithful soldier George, well, she reposed upon that slab. George was a witness of all these things, and not long afterward, he was taken, too, and he was decapitated.

As it turned out, three of Alexandra’s servants were also rounded up and put in prison, and they saw all of this, too. One of them was taken and decapitated, while the other two were taken off and thrown into cells and left to starve to death, which they did. It’s largely because of St. George that we know how St. Alexandra reposed, and she had a lot to lose in all of this, even though she was married to the most powerful man in the world at that time and really could’ve had anything that her heart desired, simply by watching the great struggles of George and the wonderful noetic vision that he imparted to her and the terrific sense of grace that she received from the things that he was going through—it was enough for her to become a Christian and to deny her husband while confessing her Lord.

So we see that even the very high and the very low are given access to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And as we learn from Alexandra and her wonderful mentor, St. George the Trophy-bearer, let us also look to all of the saints, so that we, too, can emulate them, if not in the way they died, then at least in their faith and their piety.