[Officium]
St. Nicomedes, Martyr

[Oratio]
v. Give ear, O Lord, to our supplications, and that the prayers of thy blessed martyr Nicomedes, for whose feast we are making ready, graciously pour upon us thine everlasting mercy.
$Per Dominum

[Lectio93]
This Nicomede was a Priest who was ordered to be seized during the persecution of the Christians by the Emperor Domitian, because he had buried the body of the Virgin Felicula, who had been slain by the Count Flaccus for confessing the Christian Faith. He was led to the statues of the gods, and forasmuch as he stoutly disobeyed the command to sacrifice to them, since sacrifice is due only to the one true God Who reigneth in heaven, he was flogged with scourges loaded with lead until he sealed his testimony by giving up his spirit to God. The said Count Flaccus ordered his body to be thrown into the floods of the Tiber, but Justus, clerk to Nicomede, sought diligently for it until he found it, and buried it honourably upon the road to Mentana, hard by the walls of the city.