Saint Saint Sarkis the Warrior

Saint Sargis the General or Sergius Stratelates (Armenian: Սուրբ Սարգիս Զորավար, romanized: Sourb Sargis Zoravar; died 362/3) was a Cappadocian Greek general who is revered as a martyr and military saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church and Assyrian Church of the East (January 5). The name Sargis (Sarkis) is the Armenian form of Sergius (Sergios). Sargis was a general (stratelates) in the Roman Army stationed in Cappadocia. He went into exile in Persia during the reign of the pagan Roman emperor Julian. There he fell foul of Shah Shapur II and was killed along with his son, Martiros, during Shapur's Forty-Year Persecution. Sargis the General is not to be confused with Sergius, the companion of Bacchus, who was martyred in the Roman Empire early in the fourth century. An Armenian hagiography of Sergius and Bacchus also exists. The History of the Life of Saint Sargis the General, the main account of Sargis's life and martyrdom and that of his son, was commissioned by the Patriarch Nersēs Šnorhali (1102–1173). According to his own account, Nersēs received a request from Grigor Tutēordi, a monk of the Monastery of Haghpat, for an account of the saint's life because the Georgians had been questioning the saint's origins. Nersēs then procured an Armenian translation of a Syriac life from the monastery of Mor Bar Sauma in Melitene. Nersēs made some slight emendations to this text and sent it to Grigor. The prominence of the supernatural and divine providence suggest that the History of the Life as it has come down to us originates long after the events it narrates purportedly took place. Little is known of the origins and early life of Sarkis. He lived during the 4th century and was a Greek from Cappadocia. Sarkis was appointed by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great as General in Chief of the region of Cappadocia bordering Armenia.