Trajan Decius was the Roman Emperor for but a short time (around the year 250) but his was one of the most notorious and bloody of the persecutions of Christians that were carried out before Constantine made Christianity the Empire’s official religion. Then Christians subsequently have had times of turning around and persecuting others–pagans, infidels, heretics, witches, homos… but that’s another day’s story.

Today, there’s a group of saints–Julian, Chronion, and Besus–who are honored together on February 27. They were killed during the Decian persecution because they refused to stay closeted as Christians. These guys were soldiers and met rather awful deaths–Julian and Chronion were strapped to the backs of camels, lashed with whips as the camels were led throughout the city, and then they were set on fire (and Butler felt the need to point out that Julian was suffering with gout at the time, too!). Besus “merely” had his head cut off.

But Butler’s brief discussion of these men is set in astounding juxtaposition of the “elite” Christians of Alexandria. Butler writes, “When the persecutions of Decius filled the city of Alexandria with dread and terror, many, especially among the nobles, the rich, and those who held any places in the state, sacrificed to idols, but pale and trembling, so as to show they had neither courage to die, nor heart to sacrifice.” Then Butler writes, “Several generous soldiers repaired the scandal given by these cowards.”

Coming out and being who you are in the streets and not just in the sheets–even if it means being publicly mistreated–has always held power to transform. What differentiates this from, say, the white supremacists who took to the streets in Charlottesville (many of them out of their sheets) is how many of them denied being who and how they were…much more akin to the A-list Alexandrian Christians than today’s working-guy saints.