Acacius of Apamea
The Holy Martyr Acacius, who suffered at Apamea and was buried at Synnada
Martyr · d. date not transmitted (early 4th century, if the Licinius of the passion is the emperor)
Commemorated 28 July — Martyrdom by beheading after three trials
Acacius was tried for the faith at Apamea by three successive governors — Licinius, Terence and Posidonius — and passed through the whole repertory of the ancient passions without being killed by any of it: the iron instruments, a cauldron of boiling pitch and tallow, the wild beasts, and a furnace whose heat, when the officials came to test it, burned the governor himself and not the martyr. In the end, the notice says with a dry realism unusual in the genre, the torturers were worn out, and Acacius was beheaded. A priest named Leontius carried his body away and buried it at Synnada in Phrygia. He is kept on July 28.
Apamea
The passion opens without preliminaries: Acacius was brought to trial for his belief in Christ. Of his origin, his condition in life, his age and his family the synaxaria say nothing at all — a silence characteristic of the many short notices that entered the Constantinopolitan synaxarion from local Anatolian and Syrian church calendars, where the tomb was known and the story was not.
Apamea is itself ambiguous. There were at least two great cities of the name in the regions concerned: Apamea on the Orontes in Syria Secunda, the second city of the Syrian province and a see of the patriarchate of Antioch; and Apamea Cibotus in Phrygia, on the upper Maeander. The burial at Synnada, which is unambiguously Phrygian and lay a short journey from Apamea Cibotus, argues strongly for the Phrygian city, and this entry follows that reading.
Three governors
What distinguishes the passion is its structure: not one judge but three in succession, each taking up the case where the last had failed, which in the hagiographic idiom is a way of saying that the persecution outlasted more than one administration.
Licinius began, ordering him tortured with the instruments — the iron claws and the rack of the standard formula. Terence followed, and had him thrown into a cauldron of boiling pitch and tallow, from which he emerged unhurt. Then came the beasts, which would not touch him, and the furnace: and here the notice supplies its one flash of narrative colour, for when the officials approached to see whether the fire was hot enough, the flame came out and burned the governor, while the martyr stood untouched within. Posidonius, the third, exhausted every remaining device.
Beheading and burial
At last, the account says, the torturers were exhausted and made an end with the sword. The body was taken up by a priest named Leontius, who carried it to Synnada in Phrygia and buried it there — the kind of concrete, unglamorous detail that usually marks the historical kernel of such a notice, since it names the man responsible for the cult and the place of the tomb, which are precisely the two things a local church would remember.
Feast and commemoration
July 28 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 10), a bare notice on a day headed by the synaxis of the four deacons of Acts 6. No proper office is appointed; the common of a martyr is used. The day falls in the open season between the Apostles' Fast and the Dormition Fast, so that only the ordinary Wednesday and Friday rule applies. Both the Greek and the Slavonic synaxaria carry the name; the OCA calendar prints him as "Martyr Acacius of Apamea."
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Acacius, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Acacius is shown in the general type of the lay martyr: a young or middle-aged man, short-bearded, in tunic and mantle, holding the cross of the martyr's confession in his right hand and with the left open before the breast. Nothing in his notice supplies a personal attribute, and painters who wish to distinguish him fall back on the scenes of the passion — most often the cauldron or the furnace, with the flames turning outward upon the officials — set in a small square beside the standing figure in a vita icon. No pre-1900 image identified as this Acacius has been located for this collection, and the name is so widely shared that no image should be adopted for him without a legible inscription naming Apamea or Synnada. The Menologion of Basil II covers only September to February and cannot serve a July commemoration.
Disputed questions
- Which Apamea? See above. The Phrygian city is the likelier on the evidence of the Synnada burial; the Syrian city has claimed him in some listings, and it is that claim which has entangled him with Eustathius of Ancyra, the other martyr of this same July day, whom several modern calendars style "of Apamea" although his passion is set wholly in Galatia. The two notices stand side by side in the synaxarion, and the toponym has migrated between them.
- Which Licinius? If the first governor is the emperor Licinius (308–324) — and the name is otherwise rare enough to invite the identification — the martyrdom would fall in the last persecution in the East, about 320–324. But the text calls him a governor, not an emperor, and three governors in succession is a formula rather than a datum. No year can be established; the entry's record therefore omits century and the entry indexes under unknown.
- Not to be confused with the many other saints of this very common name: Acacius of Sinai, the obedient disciple of the Ladder (November 29); Acacius the Confessor, bishop of Melitene; Acacius the Centurion, martyr of Byzantium (May 7); Acacius of Mount Ararat and the Ten Thousand Martyrs; and the several bishops of Beroea, Caesarea and Constantinople who bore it. This Acacius is identified only by Apamea and Synnada.