Alexander of Pydna
The Holy Hieromartyr Alexander the Priest, of Pydna in Macedonia
Hieromartyr · Priest · d. c. 305, at Pydna in Macedonia
Commemorated 14 March — Martyrdom at Pydna under Maximian
Alexander (died c. 305) was a priest of Pydna, a town on the coast of Macedonia south of Thessalonica, and a hieromartyr of the last great persecution. Zealous in preaching Christ and in turning the people from the worship of idols, he was seized in the persecution under the emperor Maximian (Galerius), subjected to cruel tortures which he bore unmoved, and at the last beheaded for his confession. His memory was cherished in Macedonia and on the Holy Mountain, where his skull is venerated among the treasures of the Great Lavra of Athos. The Greek synaxaria, which sometimes style him "of Thessalonica" from the region of his labours, keep him on March 14.
Alexander was a presbyter — an ordained priest — of the church of Pydna, the ancient port-town of the Pierian coast of Macedonia, below Mount Olympus and some distance south of Thessalonica; because Pydna lay within the orbit of the Thessalonian metropolis, the Greek calendars sometimes name him "Alexander of Thessalonica," and the two titles denote the one saint. The surviving notice of him is brief, in the manner of the synaxaria: he lived in the reign of the emperor Maximian — that is, in the persecution of Diocletian and his colleagues, the fiercest and last of the assaults on the Church, in the opening years of the fourth century — and gave himself wholly to the preaching of Christ, gathering the faithful, confirming them in the faith, and drawing the pagans of the district away from the sacrifices and the idols.
Denounced as a leader of the Christians, he was arrested and brought before the persecuting authority, where he confessed Christ without flinching and refused to sacrifice to the gods. He was cruelly tortured — the tradition preserves no detailed catalogue of his sufferings, only that he endured them with a constancy that shamed his judges — and, unbroken, was condemned to death and beheaded, about the year 305, receiving the crown of the hieromartyrs. His body was gathered by the faithful and honoured as the relic of a martyr.
Relics
Alexander's memory was kept in Macedonia, and his relics were venerated as a treasure of the region. His skull came in time to the Great Lavra of Saint Athanasius on Mount Athos, the senior monastery of the Holy Mountain, where it is enumerated among the sacred relics preserved there — a continuing witness to a saint of whom the written record is otherwise thin.
Feast and commemoration
Alexander is commemorated on March 14 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 27) in the Greek synaxaria and Menaia, sometimes under the name "Alexander of Thessalonica." March 14 commonly falls within Great Lent; where the day is a Lenten weekday the full Liturgy is not served, so no fixed Epistle and Gospel are appointed and the readings follow the Lenten cycle. He is one of several early martyrs named Alexander in the calendar — to be distinguished from Alexander of Jerusalem the hieromartyr-bishop, from Alexander the Sleepless, and from the later right-believing prince Alexander Nevsky, as well as from the martyr Alexander kept the following day at Side in Pamphylia.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyr Alexander, O Lord, in his contest received the crown incorruptible from thee our God; for possessed of thy might, he cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save thou our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Alexander is depicted as a priest-martyr in the settled Byzantine type: a bearded presbyter in the priestly phelonion with the cross-marked epitrachelion, holding the martyr's cross in his right hand and often a Gospel-book, his tonsure and vesture marking his priesthood and the cross his martyrdom. No identity-verified public-domain image particular to this Alexander has been secured; the entry carries no stored icon.