Great Martyr Nicetas the Goth

Nicetas was a Goth from the lands north of the Danube, baptized as a young man by the Gothic bishop Theophilus, who had been at the Council of Nicaea in 325. According to the Life, when the Gothic leader Athanaric, after a civil war with the rival chief Fritigern, began persecuting Christians, Nicetas spoke out against him and brought others to the faith.

The Life tells that he was tortured and then burned, which fits the historical persecution of Gothic Christians by Athanaric c. 369–372. His body was said to lie unburied until a Cilician merchant named Marian, who had befriended him, took it away at night and carried it to his home city of Mopsuestia. A church was built there in Nicetas's name. The Church dates his death to about 372.