Leonides

Saint Leonides (also rendered Leonidas) of Alexandria is known principally from the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea as a Christian of that city and the father of the theologian Origen. Almost nothing is recorded of his own origins, occupation, or early life. He appears in the historical record as the head of a Christian household in Alexandria in the late second century, during the episcopate of Demetrius. Eusebius presents him as a man of sincere faith who took personal charge of his eldest son's education in the Scriptures, requiring daily recitation and study, and who also provided Origen with a grounding in the secular learning customary among educated Greek-speaking families of the city.

In the tenth year of the emperor Septimius Severus, conventionally dated to 202, a persecution of Christians broke out that reached Alexandria. Leonides was arrested and, according to Eusebius, beheaded. Origen, then about seventeen, is said to have been eager to share his father's martyrdom and to have been restrained only by his mother, who hid his clothes to prevent him from leaving the house. The family's property was confiscated after Leonides' execution, leaving his widow and remaining children in poverty. Eusebius states that Leonides had seven sons in all; Origen, the eldest, thereafter supported the household by teaching.

Later martyrologies and liturgical calendars commemorate Leonides as a martyr of Alexandria. The Roman Martyrology assigns his feast to 22 April. He was never the subject of a formal papal canonization in the later medieval or modern sense; his cult belongs to the ancient, pre-congregational veneration of the martyrs. Some later hagiographical notices have called him a bishop, but the earliest and most reliable source, Eusebius, does not give him any clerical rank, and the bishop of Alexandria at the time was Demetrius. The name of Leonides' wife is not preserved.

Beyond Eusebius's account and the brief entries in the martyrologies, little can be verified. No contemporary inscription, no authentic acts of his passion, and no reliable indication of his birthplace, year of birth, or burial site have come down. His historical importance rests chiefly on his place in the family of Origen and on the example of martyrdom that, in Eusebius's narrative, shaped the young Origen's resolve.