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SHORT HISTORY
St. Arethas and Companions were Arab Christians from the ancient city of Najran in ancient Yemen (in present-day Saudi Arabia) who were victims of a multifaceted conflict between the ancient kingdoms of Himyar (in Yemen) and Axum (in Ethiopia). They were martyred in the year +523 AD. Hagiographic literature presently available in Syriac, Greek and other languages indicate a large number of Arab Christians from Najran were severely persecuted and eventually sentenced to a horrible death for their faith in the Crucified Christ.
According to tradition, Al-Harith bin Ka’b (in Greek: Arethas) was born around 427AD, in Najran. It is believed that he played a prominent part in Najran’s political life, perhaps as a governor or sayyid until his martyrdom at a ripe old age.
Historians believe that after a coup in the kingdom of Himyar, the new king rebelled against his overlords, the rulers of Axum. He undertook a systematic persecution of most Christians in South Arabia who were identified with the opposing power. Churches were burned, and those who did not abandon their Christian faith were executed.
After his generals suffered minor defeats at Najran, the king himself came to take the city with his army. Available literature indicates that he resorted to a ruse, offering a promise of safety in exchange for the peaceful surrender of its inhabitants. However, this pledge was not upheld once the city was captured. Churches, with the bodies of dead Christian leaders were burned, and the Christian inhabitants were offered the choice of apostasy or death. Hagiographic literature relates the bold witness of many Christians in the face of death, especially women.
The accounts vary in the different gruesome forms of execution to which the martyrs are said to have been subjected. What is certain is that clergy, nuns and laypersons, from different social classes and of all ages were put to death. One tradition, even alluded to in the Quran, claims that many were burned in a trench. A large number were beheaded, including the leader St. Aretas, who is said to have been between 80 to 95 years old. Children as young as 3 or 5 are said to have either chosen death or been forcibly separated from their parents to be raised as non-Christians. The number of those who were martyred is disputed, with estimates ranging from 300 persons to over 4000 persons.
The news of the massacre was published by the king of Himyar himself, who urged the neighbouring rulers to copy his own actions. Upon hearing of the account of this tragedy during a diplomatic conference with the Lakhmid king Mundhir III, the Syriac bishop Simon Beth Arsham wrote accounts of the massacre that were circulated as far as Alexandria and Constantinople. The martyrdom was quickly commemorated in the liturgies of many churches and monasteries.
Though bitter theological disputes on the nature of Christ were dividing Christians in the Byzantine empire and beyond, veneration of the martyrs quickly became common across the known Christian world, irrespective of one’s Christological belief or confession. Today, the martyrs of Najran are commemorated in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, who follow the Greek-Slavic, Ethiopian and Syriac traditions. They are also venerated in the western Latin Church: on the 24th of October, the Roman Martyrology records the “the passion in Najran in Arabia of St. Arethas, the leader of the city, and 340 companions under Dhu Nuwas, the King of Himyar, in the time of Emperor Justin”.
Hagiographic literature reports an impassioned exhortation, said to have been made by St. Arethas before his death, in which he proclaimed that “to die for Christ is to find life.” He is then said to have prophesied that “as a vine pruned at the correct time gives a good yield of fruit, God will multiply the Christian population [in this city] … the church which has been burned down will be raised up.”. Today there exists a local parish in the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia, which covers the very city of the martyrdom of St. Arethas and his companions. It was fittingly consecrated under their protection and erected in their honour in 2011 by the late Bishop Camillo Ballin.