Part of the persecution of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian (during the late 200s and early 300s) involved requiring Christians to give up all of their sacred literature to be destroyed, presumably with the plan not only to remove Christians but to remove lasting traces of their beliefs, hopes, and ideals.

Keeping in mind that this was well over a millennium before the printing press, each book of this minority-faith peoples was copied out, legibly, by hand. Each volume took hours, even days, to create. These books reflected their hearts and their labors. These recorded their community. These connected them to Christians past and created the possibility of connecting themselves to Christians future.

Not surprisingly, many Christians did as the Emperor’s emissaries demanded, forfeiting all books with the hope that this might stem the persecutions and save their lives and those of their family and community. As if.

But one man, Felix, today’s saint, knew the deep, deeper, deepest value of books–specifically of these books. He refused to surrender the stock of books that had been placed in his keeping and that he had amassed.

Butler writes that, when ordered by the civil magistrate of his city ordered Felix to hand over his books to be incinerated, “The martyr replied, it was better he himself might be burnt.”

The method of his execution was, in fact, decapitation. Although Felix, literally, lost his head, he saved those books. For him, the trade was the right one.