Andrew and Probus

The Holy Martyrs Andrew and Probus

Martyr · d. perfected by fire; no date is transmitted

Two martyrs of whom the Byzantine synaxaria preserve nothing but their names, their day, and the manner of their death: Andrew and Probus were perfected by fire. They stand on July 9 in the Greek day-lists, are given a single elegiac distich in the synaxarion, and have no Life, no place, no persecutor and no date. The entry that follows is short because the record is short.

Nothing is transmitted of the two beyond the bare notice. The Greek synaxaria for July 9 name them together — Ἀνδρέας καὶ Πρόβος — and record that they suffered by fire; the accompanying distich, which is all the commentary the tradition offers, turns on the paradox that the flames became a refreshment to them:

Standing in the arena of the fire, O Word, the two men were cooled by Thy breezes.

The image behind the couplet is the furnace of the Three Holy Youths, into whom the angel came down and made "a moist whistling wind" in the midst of the flame (Daniel 3:50); it is the hymnographer's way of saying that they died as the Youths would have died, had the fire been permitted to do its work. Whether they were burnt in a furnace, at a stake, or in a heated instrument the notice does not say.

Their names are Greek and Latin respectively — Andreas the commonest of Greek names, Probos a Latin cognomen much used in the Roman East — which is consistent with, but no proof of, a martyrdom in the Roman persecutions of the third or early fourth century. Since not even the century is transmitted, no century is asserted here, and the entry is indexed among the saints of unknown date.

Feast and commemoration

July 9 (church date; New Calendar civil July 9, Old Calendar civil July 22), in the Greek day-calendars only; the Slavonic and American calendars do not keep them. They are commemorated with the synaxarion notice and the common of martyrs, without an office of their own.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of 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.

Synaxarion

Standing in the arena of the fire, O Word, the two men were cooled by Thy breezes.

Iconography

Where two martyrs are known only by name and by the manner of their death, the painters give them the type and nothing more: two men side by side, one older and bearded, one younger, in tunic and mantle, each holding the martyr's cross, and behind or beneath them the flames that are their only attribute. No image of them of any date has been identified, and none is stored. Their day falls in July, outside the September-to-February span of the Menologion of Basil II, so that manuscript — the ordinary first resort for minor saints of the fixed year — cannot supply one.

Disputed questions

Not to be confused with Probus, Tarachus and Andronicus (October 12), the three martyrs of Cilicia under Diocletian whose full acta survive. The resemblance is real and misleading: that group also joins a Probus to a man whose name begins Andr-, and a careless index can merge the two. They are distinct commemorations on distinct days, and the Cilician three are known in detail while the pair of July 9 are known only by name.
Whether the pair belong to a larger company. Bare doublets of this kind in the synaxarion are often the surviving fragment of a company whose other names have dropped out in transmission. Nothing supports the guess in this case, and it is recorded only as a possibility.