Young Julian came from a mixed household: his father was a distinguished pagan senator, his mother a devout Christian. The martyr's birthplace was Cilicia, but after his father's death, he moved with his mother to Tarsus. There, the widowed woman had her son baptised and raised him in godliness and moral purity. When Julian turned eighteen, a wave of brutal persecution against Christians began under Emperor Diocletian.
The emperor’s men seized the devout youth and put him on trial. Marcian, the governor of Tarsus, tried first with kind words, then with threats, and finally with pain. When these failed, he ordered Julian to be paraded through the towns of Cilicia. In each place, the pagans beat, questioned, and savagely ill-treated him, urging the saint to turn from Christ and offer sacrifice to their idols. But Julian would not give in.
All the while, his mother trailed behind, praying he would stay strong and true to his beliefs. When the guards locked him in a cell, she gained leave to visit. She promised to persuade her resolute son to change his mind, but instead, for three whole days, she urged him to embrace a martyr’s end with honour.
Thinking he had at last broken their spirit, Marcian called for Julian and his mother. To Marcian's great surprise, the mother then declared herself a Christian too, even as her son spoke out more boldly against the old gods. For this defiance, they cut off the mother’s feet, and she perished from her injuries. The governor then commanded that Saint Julian himself be put into a sack, weighed down with sand and filled with snakes, and cast into the deep. Later, the sea currents washed his sacred remains ashore near Alexandria, where a Christian woman laid the saint to rest. In time, the relics were moved to Antioch.
