Alexander and Antonina
The Holy Martyr Alexander and the Holy Virgin-Martyr Antonina, who suffered at Krodamon
Martyr · Virgin · d. c. 313
Commemorated 10 June — Martyrdom by fire after the exchange of clothes
Antonina was a Christian virgin of Krodamon in Asia Minor, celebrated for her beauty and her almsgiving, who was denounced to the governor Festus and, having refused both his threats and his offer to make her a priestess of Artemis, was condemned to be violated in a soldiers' brothel. Alexander, a soldier of the guard and himself secretly a Christian, contrived to enter her cell, gave her his military cloak and helmet, and sent her out disguised as a soldier while he remained in her place. When the substitution was discovered he bore the torments in silence; Antonina returned of her own will to stand beside him. The two had their hands cut off, were smeared with pitch, and were cast into a burning pit, about the year 313. Their relics were afterwards taken to Constantinople.
Antonina of Krodamon
The passion locates Antonina at Krodamon (Κρόδαμνος; the name is transmitted also as Krodamos and, in the Latin tradition, Cardamum), a town of Asia Minor whose site is not now identifiable with confidence. She was a virgin of Christian confession, and the notice dwells on two things: that she was of remarkable beauty, and that she spent what she had on the poor. Both details matter to the narrative that follows — the first because it is what makes the governor's sentence what it is, the second because it is what makes her known in the town, and so denounceable.
She was reported to the governor Festus (Φῆστος; the Slavonic books call him Fest). Brought before him, she was pressed first with argument and inducement — the office of priestess of Artemis was held out to her, a place of honour, revenue and civic standing — and then with threats. She answered by confessing Christ and denouncing the idols as nothing. She was struck on the face and committed to prison.
The prison, the fast, and the sentence
In prison she gave herself to unbroken prayer and refused food. The passion records that after some days she heard a voice bidding her take food and be of good courage — "for I am with you" — and that she was strengthened by it. Summoned again, she spoke more openly still against the worship of the demons.
Festus then passed the sentence that gives this passion its character. Unable to break her, and unwilling to make a public execution of a woman whose charity had made her popular, he handed her over to be defiled: she was to be shut in a place where the soldiers of the guard might come to her in turn. The account insists that the sentence was frustrated — the tradition speaks of a divine restraint upon those who attempted her, and of three days in which she was not touched.
Alexander and the exchange of clothes
Among the soldiers of the guard was Alexander, a young man who was a Christian and had kept it hidden. Under the pretext of taking his turn with the prisoner he obtained entry to the cell, and there disclosed himself: he proposed that she put on his soldier's uniform — cloak, belt and helmet — cover her face, and walk out past the guards as one of their own, while he stayed behind in her place. Antonina at first refused, unwilling that another should suffer for her; the passion says she was moved to consent by a divine direction, and so went out in the soldier's dress and passed unrecognised.
When the guard came at last into the cell they found not the virgin but Alexander alone. He was brought to Festus and questioned about where she had gone; he answered nothing at all, and endured beating and torture in silence. It is at this point that Antonina, hearing of it, came back of her own accord and presented herself to the governor, that she might not be saved at the cost of her deliverer. The two then stood together before the tribunal, and confessed Christ together.
Martyrdom
Festus condemned them jointly. The passion records a progression of torments — scourging, the tearing of the flesh — and then the amputation of their hands; and then that they were smeared with pitch and thrown into a burning pit, in which they died. To prevent the Christians from gathering what remained of them, serpents were cast into the pit after them. The year given by the tradition is 313, and the day of the martyrdom May 3, though the commemoration is kept on June 10 — the discrepancy is transmitted openly in the notices and is discussed below.
The governor himself, the notice adds, was seized with an agonising sickness and died on the seventh day after the martyrdom.
Relics
The relics were afterwards brought to Constantinople and laid in the monastery which the notices call that of Maximus (or Maximina); it is there that the feast was kept in the capital, and from the Constantinopolitan calendar that the commemoration passed into the Greek and Slavonic books. The pair are accordingly styled in the Slavonic and the American usage "Martyr Alexander and Virgin-Martyr Antonina at Constantinople," which names the resting place of their relics rather than the place of their contest.
Feast and commemoration
June 10 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 23). The two are kept as a single commemoration in all the traditions, and never separately: the Greek books head the notice "Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ Ἀντωνίνα," the Slavonic "the Martyr Alexander and the Virgin-Martyr Antonina," and the Antiochian usage follows the Greek. Their passion has enjoyed a wide popular circulation out of proportion to the brevity of the notice, for the sake of the episode of the exchanged clothes, which is unique in the Byzantine martyr-literature: the soldier who takes the woman's place in the brothel-cell and dies for it. Where the Slavonic Prologue is read at table in monasteries, this is one of the June readings most often remembered.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of two martyrs)
Thy martyrs Alexander and Antonina, O Lord, in their contest received from Thee our God the crowns of incorruption; for possessing Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions save our souls.
Kontakion — Tone 4 (common of martyrs)
The valiant soldier gave his own garments to the virgin, and put on in their stead the raiment of martyrdom; and she, refusing to be saved alone, returned to stand at his side. Wherefore, O Alexander and Antonina, being crowned together, ye intercede together for our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The pair are shown together, as they are commemorated: Antonina as a young virgin-martyr, uncovered or lightly veiled, in the long tunic and mantle, holding the cross of confession, and Alexander beside her as a young soldier-martyr, beardless, in the short military tunic with cloak and belt, sometimes with a lance or with his helmet in his hand. Where the scene of the passion is painted, the two are shown side by side in the fiery pit, hands severed, with the serpents about them; the moment of the exchange of clothes — the soldier handing his cloak to the veiled girl through the door of the cell — appears in a few late Greek narrative cycles, and is the detail an iconographer will choose if the icon is to tell the story rather than present the persons. In the composite Russian menaion icons of June they stand together in the register of the tenth day.
No pre-1900 icon of Alexander and Antonina has been located for this collection. Wikimedia Commons searches under the Greek and Russian forms of the names, and under "Antonina martyr icon," return nothing depicting these saints; the only images of a "Saint Antonina" found belong to the Nicene martyr of March 1 or to unrelated Western dedications.
Disputed questions
- Two dates. The passion gives May 3 as the day of the martyrdom and the calendars keep the feast on June 10. The commonest explanation is that June 10 is the day of the translation or deposition of the relics at Constantinople, which became the day of the synaxis; the Greek books give no reconciliation and simply carry both figures.
- The relation to Antonina of Nicaea (March 1) is an open question, and the sources disagree. A number of synaxaria and modern calendars treat the June 10 Antonina as the same saint as the martyr of Nicaea kept on March 1, on two days; on that view June 10 is a second commemoration of one Bithynian virgin-martyr. Against the identification stand three things: the June 10 commemoration is irreducibly joint, being of a pair, and the passion of Alexander cannot be transferred to March 1; the place is Krodamon, not Nicaea; and the magistrate (Festus) and the manner of death (the severed hands, the pitch, the burning pit) differ from the Nicene passion (the rack, fire, long imprisonment, and in some texts a drowning). This entry therefore treats the pair of June 10 as its own commemoration — which is how every tradition actually keeps the day — while recording that the Antonina of the two days may be one person. The uncertainty is genuine and is not resolved here; the March 1 entry states the identifying view.
- Not to be confused with the many other martyr-Alexanders of the Greek calendar — among them Alexander of Rome the soldier, Alexander of Pydna, and Alexander of Side. This Alexander has no independent cultus and no separate feast: he is commemorated only with Antonina.
- Place and date. Krodamon is unlocated. The date 313 sits awkwardly with the Edict of Milan of that same year, and some scholars would push the martyrdom back into the Diocletianic or Licinian persecutions in the East (where persecution continued after 313 in Licinius' territory); the notices themselves are content with "in the time of the persecution."
- Whether Antonina is properly styled virgin-martyr. The Greek books call her ἡ πάνσεμνος, "the all-modest," and the Slavonic tradition styles her virgin-martyr (мученица-дева); the epithet is universal in the tradition and is retained here.