Anthimus of Nicomedia

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Anthimus of Nicomedia (martyred 303 or 311–12), a contemporary of Gregory Nazianzen, was the bishop of Nicomedia in Bithynia, where he was beheaded during a persecution of Christians, traditionally placed under Diocletian (following Eusebius), in which "rivers of blood" flowed, according to Christian sources, which memorialized the "20,000 martyrs of Nicomedia". Nicomedia was Diocletian's chief place of residence, and was made by him the Eastern capital of the empire. The city was half Christian, the palace itself being filled with Christians (CE "Nicomedia"). The massacres transpired in the Christian communities of Bithynia after altars were set up in the marketplaces, in which no transactions were permitted until a token sacrifice to the gods and the daemon of the Augustus had been performed.

The main Christian church of Nicomedia was destroyed on February 23, 303, and the First Edict was published on the following day. Anthemus took refuge in the small village of Omana, where, when the soldiers of Maximinus were sent to find him, he welcomed them and fed them before he revealed who he was. The detail referring to Maximinus suggests that two persecutions have been conflated.

Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (reference) note that a fragmentary letter preserved in the Chronicon Paschale, as written in prison by the presbyter Lucian of Antioch awaiting death, mentions Anthimus, bishop of Nicomedia, as having just suffered martyrdom. Schaff and Wace note that Lucian, however, was imprisoned and put to death during the persecution of Maximinus (in 311 or 312)."It would seem, therefore, if the fragment given in the Chron. Paschale be genuine, and there seems no good reason to doubt it, that Anthimus suffered martyrdom not under Diocletian, but under Maximinus, in 311 or 312".

The anniversary of his martyrdom is commemorated on April 27.