Finding of the Relics of the Holy Martyrs at the Gate of Eugenius
The Uncovering of the Relics of the Holy Martyrs that were found in the Quarter of Eugenius at Constantinople
On February 22 the Church of Constantinople keeps the finding of a great cache of martyrs' relics uncovered near the gate and tower of Eugenius, in the quarter of that name on the city's Golden Horn shore. Hidden by the faithful in the age of the persecutions and long forgotten, the incorrupt bodies were brought to light, translated with honour to a church, and glorified by healings and the casting-out of demons. The names of these martyrs were unknown — "written," the synaxarion says, "in the Book of Life" — until a pious cleric, Nicholas Kalligraphos (the Calligrapher), received a revelation that among them lay the Apostle Andronicus of the Seventy and his fellow-labourer Junia, the kinsfolk of Saint Paul "of note among the apostles" (Romans 16:7). An emperor named Andronicus, whose patron the Apostle was, afterward raised a great domed church over the spot. The feast is thus at once a commemoration of hidden and anonymous martyrs and a memorial of the Apostle Andronicus and Junia.
The quarter of Eugenius and its hidden martyrs
The Eugenius quarter (τὰ Εὐγενίου) lay in the north-east of Constantinople, on the Golden Horn below the Acropolis point, taking its name from a gate and a tower of the sea-wall. Like every early Christian city, Constantinople — and Byzantium before it — had buried its martyrs quietly in the years when to confess Christ was a capital crime, and in the disorder of the persecutions the burying-places of many were lost to memory. The synaxarion of this day preserves the general principle in a single sentence: during the persecutions the faithful commonly concealed the bodies of the martyrs in hidden places, so that when the peace of the Church came, whole companies of the holy dead lay forgotten in the earth. At the Eugenius gate one such cache was found — the incorrupt relics of several martyrs, uncovered together — and their discovery is what the Church commemorates.
The bodies were translated by the bishop, with candles and psalmody, to a church of the city, and there the sign of their sanctity was given: the sick who came to them were healed, and demons were driven out of the possessed. Yet who they were, no one could say. The tradition dwells on precisely this — that the Church honours here a company of martyrs known to God alone, whose names are not written in any calendar because they are "written in the Book of Life" (cf. Revelation 20:12). The feast is, in this first aspect, a commemoration of all the hidden and nameless martyrs of the city, gathered under one day.
The revelation to Nicholas Kalligraphos
To the finding of the nameless relics the tradition joins a second event: their partial identification by revelation. A devout cleric of Constantinople named Nicholas the Calligrapher (Kalligraphos) was granted a vision or divine disclosure that among the martyrs found at the Eugenius gate were the relics of the Apostle Andronicus, one of the Seventy, and of Junia (in some readings Junias), the two whom the Apostle Paul greets at the end of the Letter to the Romans: "Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me" (Romans 16:7). The early tradition of the Church numbered Andronicus among the Seventy and made him a bishop and a preacher of the Gospel in Pannonia; Junia (whom much of the tradition takes for his wife or sister and fellow-labourer) shared his apostolic toil. Their principal commemorations fall on other days — the Apostle Andronicus is kept on May 17 and July 30, and among the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles on January 4 — but the February 22 finding drew their memory to the Eugenius shrine, and the two feasts are cross-referred in the calendars.
The church of the Apostle Andronicus
The veneration culminated in the building of a church. The tradition, followed by the Orthodox Church in America's synaxarion, holds that an emperor Andronicus — chosen for the work, it says, because the Apostle Andronicus was his own patron-saint — raised a great domed church at the place of the finding. The reign-dates the synaxarion attaches to this emperor (1183–1185) are those of Andronicus I Komnenos; some accounts instead name Andronicus II Palaiologos (reigned 1282–1328), and the OCA text styles the builder "Andronicus II" while giving the twelfth-century dates. The discrepancy is noted here rather than resolved: the constant of the tradition is that an imperial Andronicus, honouring his apostolic namesake, enshrined the relics found at the Eugenius gate in a domed church that became their home.
The dating of the finding
The date of the finding itself is transmitted differently by different witnesses, and the divergence is recorded, not silently settled:
- The Slavic synaxaria (and azbyka.ru for the Old-Calendar March 7) place the uncovering in the years 395–423, that is, in the reign of the emperor Arcadius or the early years of Theodosius II.
- OrthodoxWiki and some Greek sources date it to 607–610, in the reign of Phocas.
- The identification by Nicholas Kalligraphos and the building of the church belong to the later, middle-Byzantine phase (the twelfth or the late thirteenth century, per the emperor-Andronicus question above).
The likeliest reading is that the tradition compresses two distinct moments — an early finding of anonymous martyrs, and a much later revelation and enshrinement under an imperial Andronicus — into the single February 22 commemoration. The feast in its received form holds both together.
Feast and commemoration
February 22 (church date; New Calendar civil February 22; Old Calendar civil March 7). The commemoration belongs to the sanctoral proper of Constantinople and passed from the Synaxarion of the Great Church into the wider Byzantine calendar; it is kept by the Greek, Slavic, and Antiochian usage on this day, alongside the martyrs of Apamea and the Syrian hermits Thalassius, Limnaeus and Baradates. In the Slavic books the day's title is "the Finding of the Relics of the Martyrs that were in [the quarter of] Eugenius" (Обретение мощей мучеников, иже во Евгении). The Apostle Andronicus's own festal days (May 17; July 30; and January 4 with the Seventy) are the fuller commemorations of his person; February 22 honours the finding of the relics and the whole nameless company uncovered with them.
Taxonomy flag — feast_type. As with the
Veneration of the Chains of the Apostle Peter
(January 16), the controlled feast_type vocabulary of the project's constitution
(indiction | theotokos-synaxis | icon-of-the-theotokos | angelic | dominical | theotokian | dedication | deliverance) has no value for the finding, translation,
or veneration of relics — which is exactly what this feast is. dedication is
used here as the nearest existing term, and it has real (if partial) footing:
the tradition's culmination is the dedication of the domed church raised over
the relics by the emperor Andronicus. But the core of the commemoration is a
relic-finding (in rank terms a translation-of-relics, a value that lives only
in the per-feast rank list, not among feast_types). No new term is minted here;
the gap is flagged to extend the standing relic-feast question at
the project's record of open questions — the same decision family as the Chains of Peter. A
relic / relic-veneration feast_type would fit this feast exactly.
Schema home. This commemoration is authored as a feast file rather than a saint file because its subject is an event (the uncovering of relics) and a company of martyrs who are anonymous — "known to God alone." The one named identification, the Apostle Andronicus and Junia, is a later revelation and is cross-referred to the Apostle's own entry (currently the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles; a dedicated Apostle Andronicus file belongs to his May 17 principal feast when the sweep reaches it, and this file is to be linked to it then).
Hymns
Troparion
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received crowns of incorruption from Thee our God; for possessed of Thy might, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the powerless insolence of demons. By their supplications, O Christ our God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Kontakion
As stars that the Church has found shining in the earth, the treasure of your holy relics, O martyrs of Christ, enlightens the faithful who keep your memory; for by your hidden struggles you were made manifest, and you pour out healings on them that draw near.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The feast is imaged as a finding and translation of relics: clergy in vesture lifting or bearing incorrupt bodies from the earth, a reliquary or bier carried in procession toward a church, censers and candles, and the sick and the possessed brought to be healed at the relics — the standard Byzantine "uncovering of relics" composition (as the Menologion of Basil II renders such scenes for other days). Where the Apostle Andronicus is shown, he appears as an apostle of the Seventy — a bearded figure in tunic and himation holding a scroll — and Junia beside him. No identity-verified pre-1900 image specific to the Eugenius finding was located; the commemoration is noted as wanting an icon.