Martyr Joseph of Karnu

The Brothers of Karnu

Joseph is not commemorated in isolation: he and his brother Isaac form a single martyric account in the tradition. According to the OCA life, the two were born into a Muslim household in Theodosiopolis yet were brought up in secret as Christians by their mother, a Georgian believer. As young men they had become well known and respected among the nobility of the city.

When the brothers resolved to journey to Byzantium and ask Emperor Nikephoros I (who reigned from 802 to 811) for leave to settle in his capital, the local emir demanded to know the reason for their travel. They answered by confessing their faith openly. Their aged father is said to have wept and urged them to deny Christ, and the emir tried first reward and then the threat of torture and death; the brothers answered with passages of Scripture and would not yield. The emir then ordered them put to death, and they were beheaded.

Traditional Accounts

The synaxarion relates that after the beheading the bodies of the martyrs remained untouched, and that on the night following their death their remains shone with a radiant light — a sign reported to have terrified those who had killed them. With the leave of the frightened authorities, local Christians buried the brothers with reverence, and a church was afterward built over the place of their burial.

Name and Place

The epithet “of Karnu” refers to the city of Theodosiopolis, renamed by the emperor Theodosius II in the fifth century and known in Armenian as Karin. Georgians called it Karnu-kalaki, “Karnu-city,” which is the source of the name attached to these martyrs. The city, in the region of Upper Armenia, was long contested among Byzantines, Armenians, Georgians, and later Seljuks, and is the modern Erzurum in eastern Turkey.