Commemoration of Mar Shimun bar Sabbae

Culture of origin: Assyrian · Historical

Holiday sources: Assyrian

Mar Shimun bar Sabbae was bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Sasanian capital, and head of the Church of the East during Shapur II's persecution of the Christians. Accused of friendship with the Roman emperor, he refused to convert to Zoroastrianism and was beheaded on Good Friday 345 with bishops, priests and lay people, his companions numbered at 100 or 1,150; the fifth-century historian Sozomen put the martyrs of the persecution at 16,000. The Assyrian Church of the East remembers him on the sixth Friday of its season of Summer: 16 August 2024, 5 September 2025 and 21 August 2026.