Apollonius of Sardis
The Holy Martyr Apollonius of Sardis, crucified at Iconium
Martyr · d. 3rd century, at Iconium
Commemorated 10 July — Martyrdom by crucifixion at Iconium
Apollonius was a Christian of Sardis in Lydia, the ancient capital of the Lydian kings and one of the seven churches of the Apocalypse, who was arrested for confessing Christ in the third century and put to death by crucifixion at Iconium. The one detail the synaxarion preserves of his trial is the point on which he broke with the court: he refused to take the oath by the genius of the emperor, saying that it was not lawful for a Christian to swear by a mortal man. He was tortured at length for the refusal and then crucified — a manner of death rare enough among the martyrs to have kept his name in the calendar when almost everything else about him was lost.
Sardis
Sardis, in the valley of the Hermus in Lydia, was among the oldest and most Christian of the cities of Asia. It is one of the seven churches addressed in the Revelation (Rev. 3:1–6, the church that has "a name that thou livest, and art dead"); it was the see of Melito, one of the great second-century apologists, and later of Euthymius and Therapon, whom this collection records elsewhere. Apollonius belonged to this church. Nothing is transmitted of his family, his trade or his age.
Confession and trial
He was denounced or came forward — the notice is not explicit — and was brought before the authorities. Required to abjure, he confessed himself a Christian; and when the standard formula of loyalty was put to him and he was ordered to swear by the fortune of the emperor, he answered that an oath is sworn by God, and that it was not fitting to swear by a man who was himself mortal and would die. The refusal of the imperial oath was in Roman law the operative act of treason, and the trial proceeded on it.
Crucifixion at Iconium
He was tortured for a long time and remained unmoved. The sentence, executed at Iconium in Lycaonia — the city of the Apostle Paul's preaching and of Thecla — was crucifixion. It is the distinguishing feature of his passion: by the third century crucifixion was reserved for slaves, brigands and the most despised of provincials, and the Church noted its use upon a Christian as a conformity to the death of the Lord.
Feast and commemoration
July 10 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 23), kept universally and carried by the Greek and Slavonic synaxaria and by the OCA. His notice stands second in the day's list, after the martyrs of Nicopolis. No proper office is appointed; he is commemorated at the sixth ode with the other martyrs of the day.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Apollonius, 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.
Iconography
Apollonius is written as a young or middle-aged layman-martyr: short dark beard or beardless, the tunic and mantle of a townsman, the small cross of the martyrs in his right hand, the left open before the breast. The single attribute that distinguishes him, where a painter troubles to give one, is the cross of his own death — he may be shown bound or nailed upon it in the scene of the passion, which is how the illustrated menaia depict him. No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The date. The received accounts place the martyrdom either under Decius (249–251) or under Valerian (253–259); the calendars do not decide, and neither does this entry. The century of repose is the third on either reckoning.
- Why Iconium? The notice makes him a man of Sardis in Lydia but has him die at Iconium in Lycaonia, several days' journey inland. Either he was arrested while travelling, or he was sent under guard to the governor's assize, or two notices have been joined. The sources do not explain the discrepancy and it is recorded here as it stands.
- Not to be confused with Apollonius the Apologist (Jul 23), the Roman senator martyred at Rome about 185 under Commodus, whose Acts Eusebius knew and whose refusal to swear by the emperor's genius is likewise the hinge of his trial (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V.21). The resemblance of the two refusals has caused the two Apolloniuses to be confused, and it has been suggested that the Asian notice is a secondary form of the Roman one; the Byzantine calendar keeps them apart and so does this corpus. Nor is he to be confused with Apollo of the Thebaid, the Egyptian abba, or with the deacon Apollonius commemorated with Philemon in Egypt.