Apollos the Bishop

Our Father among the Saints Apollos the Bishop

Bishop

Apollos — the name appears also as Apollo — is a bishop-saint commemorated in the Greek synaxaria on June 10, of whom nothing whatever is transmitted beyond the fact that he was a bishop and that he reposed in peace. The Greek books carry him with a single distich, and the standard Greek calendars state plainly that no further details of his life survive. He is recorded here at the length the record allows, and no more.

Nothing is known. The Greek synaxarion entry consists of the saint's name, his rank — ἐπίσκοπος, bishop — and the note that he ended his life peacefully (ἀπεβίωσε εἰρηνικά), which in the language of the synaxaria means that he was not a martyr. No see is named, no century is given, no place, no parents, no act.

What survives with the name is the couplet the Byzantine menologists attached to it, of the kind that stands at the head of each day's notices — a two-line epigram playing on the words of the Lord, "my yoke is easy" (Matt. 11:30): that the yoke of Christ which Apollos took up in his life he proclaims to be good now that he is dead. The distich is a comment on the name in the calendar, not a record of a life; it tells us only that the compiler had nothing else.

Feast and commemoration

June 10 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 23), among the minor commemorations of the day in the Greek calendars, after the martyrs and ascetics. He has no office of his own; where he is commemorated at all liturgically the common of a hierarch is used, and in practice his name is simply read in the synaxarion at Orthros with the others of the day.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)

O God of our fathers, who dealest ever with us according to Thy gentleness: take not Thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of Thy hierarch Apollos, guide our life in peace.

Iconography

There is no established type. Where a painter is required to include him — in a composite menologion icon of the month of June, which is the only context in which he is likely to be painted — he is shown as a hierarch: in phelonion and crossed omophorion, blessing, with the Gospel-book, and distinguished only by the inscription of his name. No pre-1900 icon of this Apollos exists to be found, and none could be identified with confidence if it did, since any image so inscribed would more probably belong to the Apostle Apollos of the Seventy.

Disputed questions

Not to be confused with the Apostle Apollos of the Seventy — the eloquent Alexandrian Jew of Acts 18:24–28 and 1 Corinthians, afterwards reckoned bishop of Caesarea or of Smyrna, who is commemorated with the Seventy and on March 30 and December 8. That Apollos is an apostolic figure with a scriptural biography; this one is a bare name in a June synaxarion. Some later calendars, faced with two Apollos-bishops, have tried to merge them; there is no ground for it, and the Greek books keep June 10 separate.
The century is unknown and is therefore omitted from this entry's frontmatter; he indexes under unknown. Nothing in the notice constrains a date.
Whether the name is Ἀπολλώς or Ἀπόλλων. The Greek calendars give both forms for this commemoration; they are the same saint.
Whether he is a Greek commemoration only. He is not in the Russian menologion for June 10, nor in the OCA's calendar for the day. He is carried by the Greek synaxaristes and by the calendars that follow it.