The 3,628 Martyrs of Nicomedia were a large company of Christians put to death together at Nicomedia, in Asia Minor, during the persecution under the emperors Diocletian (284-305) and Maximian (305-311). They are commemorated by the Orthodox Church on September 2. The synaxarion records their number as 3,628 and counts among them not only men but their wives and children, who shared in their confession and death.
According to the tradition, these Christians had come from Alexandria in Egypt, and had been brought to faith in Christ following the martyrdom of Peter, Archbishop of Alexandria (commemorated November 25). Taking their families with them, they traveled to Nicomedia and there voluntarily presented themselves for martyrdom, openly declaring, 'We are Christians,' rather than awaiting arrest.
When the emperor Diocletian was unable to persuade them to renounce their faith, he ordered that the entire company be beheaded, and their bodies cast into a fiery pit. The tradition further relates that their relics were discovered many years afterward through various manifestations of grace. Their commemoration belongs to the wider memory of the great Diocletianic persecution, which fell with particular severity upon Nicomedia, then an imperial residence and a center of the persecution in the East.
