An entire family, comprised of 12 brothers, was wiped out in one of the early persecutions of Christians, during the mid-3rd century. History has preserved only these details: their names, their place of birth, and their place of death.

Felix, Donatus, Arontius, Honoratus, Fortunatus, Sabinianus, Septimius (guess because he was the seventh-born!), Januarius, Felix (again!), Vitalis, Satyrus, and Repositus (I’m not willing to speculate about how the youngest ended up with this name!)–these were the twelve brothers.

They were born in northern Africa, in a city called Hadrumetum, located in present-day Tunisia. And this is where they were discovered by emissaries of the Roman Empire as Christians, rounded up, initially maltreated, and then hustled onto a ship to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

From the African coast, these 12 were taken to Benevento (part of present-day Italy), where they were ultimately executed.

It’s important to remember the names of all those who were slaughtered, murdered out of blind prejudice and the insecurities of those holding power. And it is just as important not to bracket out these 12 from others in history (such as by highlighting them as Christian martyrs), because then the emphasis stays on the special heroism or morality or godliness of those killed. Would the murder of an entire family of average people that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time somehow be less horrifying, less worthy of being part of our collective memory, less significant?!

Moreover, we cannot afford to look away from those who ordered the murders, those who carried out the murders, those who made any part of the logistics possible, and those bystanders who took no actions to stop the murders. Think about how many people were necessarily involved in killing these 12 brothers:

• Those who elevated someone to the position of Roman Emperor.
• The Emperor who issued the order to kill Christians.
• The persons who wrote down these orders.
• The persons who carried these orders from one location to another.
• The persons who accepted these orders and passed them on.
• Those who crossed the Mediterranean to continue these orders.
• Those who rowed, steered, and navigated the boat to the Tunisian coast.
• Those who delivered the orders to Roman soldiers in Africa.
• Those who curried their horses.
• Those who directed the soldiers to the town of Hadrumetum.
• Residents in Hadrumetum who knew where the home of the 12 brothers was and pointed it out.
• Neighbors who were too afraid to stop the soldiers.
• Those who re-shod any horse that threw a shoe.
• Those who loaded the brothers on the ship back to Benevento.
• Those who….

Get the picture?

These 12 could not have been put to death without all these persons from scribes to oarsmen to neighbors who wittingly or not participated. Sure, there are varying degrees of culpability, but one lesson that Hannah Arendt, in her towering work, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, drives home is that the Holocaust could never have happened without almost innumerable civil servants, railroad workers, builders of ovens, managers, payroll clerks, schedule-keepers, wood choppers, ditch diggers and more–most of whom simply thought of themselves as just “doing a job.” In Arendt’s first-hand observations, the ultra-evil Adolf Eichmann was a lump, a civil servant with tunnel vision who focused on being as efficient as possible in his job (scheduling trains that transported Jews to their deaths) so he could please his superiors! What is more, the evil of Nazism relied far more heavily upon armies of pencil pushers who never raised their heads up long enough to see what part they were playing in the ghastly extermination of millions of human beings than upon the Gestapo or German SS.

Think of our 12 brothers. So many people who had no personal stake in, interest in, or connection to these 12 were necessary to make it possible for them to be rounded up in Africa, transported to Italy, and murdered there. Far more than one Emperor, a few soldiers, and an executioner or two.

We must Remember. And we must Think. We must lift our own heads up and look around. We must consider our own place in the larger picture of what happens in and to our world.