Bishops Nemesian

Saint Nemesian (Latin: Nemesianus) was a Christian bishop in the Roman province of Numidia in North Africa in the mid-third century. Almost nothing can be verified about his early life, family, or the circumstances of his election to the episcopate. By that period Numidia possessed a well-organized network of local churches in close communion with Carthage, and Nemesian belonged to a group of Numidian bishops who appear in the surviving correspondence of Saint Cyprian. He is known to history almost exclusively through that correspondence and through later martyrologies that commemorate him with his companions.

In 257 the Emperor Valerian issued an edict requiring Christians to take part in the state cult and forbidding assemblies. Clergy who refused were liable to exile or condemnation to the mines. Nemesian was arrested together with fellow Numidian bishops Felix, Lucius, another Felix, Litteus, Polianus, Victor, Jader and Dativus, as well as priests, deacons and lay Christians. They were sentenced to hard labour in the mines, traditionally associated with the district of Sigus in Numidia. From that place of forced labour the confessors sent a letter to Cyprian, who had himself been banished to Curubis. The letter, preserved among Cyprian’s epistles, attests their continued faith, their solidarity with the exiled bishop of Carthage, and the harsh conditions they endured: chains, insufficient food, and the brutality of penal servitude.

Cyprian replied with a letter of encouragement that praises their confession. Traditional accounts hold that Nemesian and his companions died as martyrs, either from the extreme hardships of the mines or by later execution, in the same persecution. The Roman Martyrology and later liturgical calendars commemorate them on 10 September. Because the principal sources are brief and collective, individual biographical details—place of birth, exact see, manner of death, and burial—remain unknown. Their cult belongs to the ancient, pre-congregation veneration of the African martyrs of the Valerian persecution rather than to a later formal process of canonization.