Aquila and Hilarius
The Holy Martyrs Aquila and Hilarius, perfected by the sword
Martyr
Commemorated 14 July — Beheaded together
Aquila and Hilarius are two martyrs of whom the Greek synaxarion of July 14 preserves nothing beyond their names, the fact that they suffered together, and the manner of their death: they were perfected by the sword. Neither their country, their date, nor the persecution under which they died has come down. They belong to that great company whose memory the Church has kept faithfully while the acts of their passion were lost.
The notice stands among the supplementary commemorations of July 14 in the Greek books, after the fuller entries for the Apostle Aquila, the Martyr Justus, the Venerable Onesimus and Joseph of Thessalonica, in the terse formula the synaxarion uses for martyrs whose passion is no longer extant: the holy martyrs Aquila and Hilarius are perfected by the sword. That they are named together indicates that they suffered together — a pair, most probably, of the kind the martyrologies are full of: fellow-soldiers, fellow-townsmen, or kinsmen, denounced in the same hour and beheaded in the same place. Beheading was the penalty for citizens and for soldiers, which may be a faint indication of their standing; nothing further can be drawn from it. Since no date is transmitted, no century can be assigned to them.
Feast and commemoration
July 14 (church date; New Calendar civil July 14, Old Calendar civil July 27). The commemoration is carried in the Greek synaxaria of the day; the Slavic calendars and the OCA do not list these martyrs on July 14, and their memory is accordingly recorded here as a Greek commemoration pending fuller witness. There is no proper office; where their memory is served, the common of several martyrs is used.
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
Where such a pair is written at all it is in the standard martyr type: two figures side by side, in tunic and mantle, each holding the cross of witness, one older and one younger to distinguish them; the sword may be shown. They have no individual attribute and no identified image. No pre-1900 icon has been located for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The name Aquila on this day. The coincidence that a martyr Aquila should be commemorated on the very day of Aquila the Apostle of the Seventy has led some working lists to collapse the two, or to treat this notice as a doublet of the apostle's. The Greek synaxarion keeps them plainly distinct — the apostle at the head of the day with his own service and distichs, this Aquila and his companion in a bare supplementary line — and there is no warrant for identifying them. The name was extremely common.
- Hilarius. He is not Hilary the Wonderworker, nor Hilary of Poitiers, with whom nothing but the name connects him.