12th September 2025

In my last “Thought” I wrote about us now living opposite Christ Church in Nailsea. Like so many Anglican churches these days it shares a Rector with a neighbouring parish – in this case the village of Tickenham. There the church is dedicated to Saint Quiricus and Saint Julietta. No, I had never heard of them either.

They were a mother (Julietta) and her infant son. Quiricus is also known as Cyricus. They lived in Tarsus where she was condemned to death for her Christian beliefs at the time of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the 4th century. The Governor of Tarsus, Alexander, apparently tried to comfort the three-year-old child when he was snatched from his mother. As any three-year-old might he didn’t take kindly to being taken from his mother and he lashed out at Alexander and scratched his face. At this Alexander lost his temper and threw the child down the steps and he was killed outright.

I suppose today the child’s death might be described a ‘collateral damage’, a phrase heard all too often these days when so many children, as well as innocent adults, are killed in conflicts such as that in Gaza. That does seem to depersonalise them, but we may not know the names of most of them, yet each is a beloved child of a family. As the gospels tell us, Jesus had a love for children, rebuking the disciples when they tried to turn some children away: “Let the children come to me… for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Luke 18, 16). We could do worse than remember that when we hear about these child victims.

David T Roberts