Everything known of Saint Nemesius comes from a single precious page of Christian antiquity: the letter which Saint Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote to Fabius of Antioch to report what the Church of Alexandria had suffered under the emperor Decius (249–251). Long extracts of that letter were preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History, and among the confessors Dionysius names with reverence is Nemesius, an Egyptian of Alexandria, whose blood was shed about the middle of the third century.
The trial of Nemesius began not with religion but with disgrace. In the disorder of the anti-Christian pogroms that swept Alexandria, he was denounced and hauled before the authorities as a common thief, charged with keeping company with robbers. It was a slander utterly foreign to his life, and he defended himself successfully against it. The Christian who is faithful in small things is often first attacked in his reputation; Nemesius bore the shame without bitterness and cleared his name.
But the accusers were not finished. Scarcely acquitted of theft, he was informed against for the one thing of which he was truly "guilty": he was a Christian. Bound in chains, he was led before the judge — a magistrate whom later martyrologists identified with the prefect Aemilianus named by Dionysius in another of his letters. Nemesius did not dissemble. Questioned, he confessed the name of Christ and would not be moved from it.
The sentence was savage. The judge ordered him racked and scourged with double the tortures inflicted on the robbers, as though the confession of Christ were a worse crime than brigandage. Twice tormented, Nemesius held his faith unbroken; no pain could wring from him a word against his Lord. Then he was condemned to the fire and burned alive between two thieves. Christian readers of Dionysius' account have always seen in this final indignity a hidden honor: the martyr was granted a death in the very likeness of the Savior, who was crucified between two malefactors. What his judges intended as the deepest humiliation became the seal of his conformity to Christ.
The veneration of Nemesius took a curious path. His cult remained unknown to the Byzantine and Alexandrian hagiographical traditions, yet a martyr Nemesius of Alexandria is recorded, together with many other Egyptian martyrs, in the ancient Martyrologium Hieronymianum under 10 September. In the ninth century Ado of Vienne introduced his memory into his own martyrology at the date of 19 December — a day now judged arbitrary — and it was Ado who identified the judge who condemned him with Aemilianus. From Ado the notice passed, with the same date and the same information, into the Roman Martyrology as revised by Cardinal Cesare Baronio. In the Roman Martyrology reformed after the Second Vatican Council his commemoration was returned to 10 September, the day of the ancient Egyptian martyrs. Scholars such as Hippolyte Delehaye, in his study of the martyrs of Egypt, and Joseph-Marie Sauget in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum have traced this history. He is to be distinguished from the later Nemesius of Emesa, the Christian philosopher and bishop who wrote On the Nature of Man, and from Nemesius, one of the seven sons of Saint Symphorosa; the name of the Alexandrian martyr was so honored in the Church that centuries later a religious of the Sisters of Charity, Blessed Nemesia Valle, received it at her clothing as a program of life — to witness her love for Jesus to the end, at any cost, forever.
Nemesius teaches the disciple two lessons rarely joined: how to suffer a lie about one's honor, and how to suffer the truth about one's faith. He answered calumny with calm, and answered the judge with the name of Christ, and he received in return a death shaped like the Cross.
Let us ask Saint Nemesius of Alexandria to obtain for us today the courage to confess Christ without shame and the meekness to bear unjust reproach without resentment.
