died 9th century
Christians captured after the fall of Syracuse and taken to Africa, where John and his children Peter and Antoninus, with Andrew, suffered martyrdom.
The Holy Martyrs Andrew, John, Peter, and Antoninus of Syracuse
Andrew, John, Peter, and Antoninus were Christians of Syracuse in Sicily who suffered martyrdom in Africa in the ninth century. According to the synaxarion, they were taken captive following the fall and destruction of Syracuse and brought across the sea by the African ruler Ibrahim. They are commemorated together on September 23.
John and his two sons, Peter and Antoninus, were carried to Africa by Ibrahim, who compelled the youths to study the Arabic language and sciences. As they grew, Ibrahim came to value them for their learning and the virtue of their conduct: he named Antoninus his kinsman and appointed Peter as his chief steward. Andrew is commemorated alongside them as a fellow martyr of the same persecution.
When Ibrahim discovered that the young men secretly confessed faith in Christ, he turned against them in anger and ordered them bound in iron shackles and beaten with rods. The synaxarion relates that each of the four endured a distinct death, after which their bodies were cast together into a fire.
By the account preserved in the synaxarion, Antoninus was bound to a donkey and led through the city while he was beaten and mocked, and Peter was imprisoned after a severe beating with rods. John, the father, was killed by Ibrahim himself, who stabbed him in the throat.
Andrew, the tradition relates, was kept without food for a long time, then pierced twice in the chest with a spear and beheaded. The bodies of all four martyrs were afterward burned together.
Named group kept as one row.