Alexander, Barbarus and Acolythus
The Holy Martyrs Alexander, Barbarus and Acolythus
Martyr
Commemorated 14 May — Beheading; synaxis at Hagia Eirene by the Sea in Constantinople
Alexander, Barbarus and Acolythus are three martyrs of whom the Synaxarion of Constantinople preserves almost nothing beyond the essentials: that they lived holy lives, that they brought many idolaters to the Christian faith, and that they were martyred together by beheading. Their synaxis — the station at which their memory was kept in the capital — was held in the church of Hagia Eirene by the Sea, which is the one concrete fact anchoring them to a place. The synaxarion couplet plays on their number: "For the severed heads of three fellow-strugglers, the Trinity sets three worthy crowns."
The notice in the synaxarion is a single sentence, and no passio of these three survives. They are said to have lived a holy life, to have converted many pagans, and to have been beheaded — the three-part formula the synaxarist uses when he has a name, a manner of death, and a station, and nothing more. Neither the reign, the persecution, the city of their suffering, nor their status in life is given. The names themselves are of some interest: Barbarus ("the barbarian," i.e. a non-Greek) and Acolythus (ἀκόλουθος, "the follower" or "attendant") read more like descriptions than baptismal names, and may preserve, in the way such names often do, the memory of a foreigner and a servant martyred alongside a man of the city.
The synaxis at Hagia Eirene by the Sea (Ἁγία Εἰρήνη πρὸς θάλασσαν) locates their cult in Constantinople. Hagia Eirene "by the sea" is to be distinguished from the great church of Hagia Eirene beside Hagia Sophia; it stood on the shore, in the region of Perama, and appears in the synaxarion as the station for several minor commemorations. That the three were kept there suggests that their relics, or a shrine of them, were in that church, and that their memory is in origin a local Constantinopolitan one.
Feast and commemoration
May 14 (church date; Old Calendar civil May 27) in Greek usage, among the minor commemorations of the day; the Slavonic books do not carry them. They have no proper office and are sung, where they are sung at all, with the common of several martyrs.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee our God; for possessing Thy strength they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The three have no established iconographic type and are not known to be painted separately. Where the menologion cycles include them they are shown as a group of three lay martyrs, distinguished only by age — one young and beardless, one in middle life, one older — in tunics and mantles and holding crosses, or in the scene of their common beheading, kneeling in a row before the executioner. No pre-1900 image of them has been located for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Date and place are entirely unknown; no source gives an emperor, a governor, or a city. The entry is therefore indexed under an unknown century.
- Not to be confused with the other Alexander commemorated in Greek books on this same day, Alexander who suffered at Centumcellae — a soldier of the company of the comes Tiberianus, whose mother was named Poimenia and who was beheaded after his sides were opened and burned with torches. That Alexander is very probably the Alexander of Rome kept on May 13, whose passion has the same tribune Tiberian and the same mother, and he is deliberately not entered here; nor should these three be confused with Alexander of Side, Alexander of Pydna, or Alexander of Adrianople and companions.