Asterius the Senator
The Holy Martyr Asterius the Senator, at Caesarea in Palestine
Martyr · Wonderworker · d. c. 260, at Caesarea in Palestine
Commemorated 7 August — Beheading after burying the martyr Marinus
Asterius — Astyrius in the Greek of Eusebius — was a Roman senator, wealthy, of the highest standing, and a Christian, living under Valerian and Gallienus. Two things are remembered of him, both from Eusebius of Caesarea. At Caesarea Philippi (Paneas), at the pagan festival where a victim thrown into the spring of the Jordan was made to vanish by the demon of the place, Asterius prayed — and the sacrifice floated on the water in sight of all, so that the marvel ceased and the festival with it. And at Caesarea in Palestine, being present at the beheading of the soldier Marinus, he stripped off his senatorial robe, wrapped the martyr's head and body in it, and carried the relics away on his own shoulders to burial. For that act, the Byzantine tradition says, he was himself beheaded, about the year 260.
A senator and a Christian
Eusebius, who lived at Caesarea and knew the local memory, describes Asterius as a member of the Roman senate, a favourite of emperors, and known to everyone for birth and wealth — and, with all that, a Christian who made no secret of it in a period when it could cost a man everything. He is one of the very few Christians of senatorial rank whom a third-century source names outright.
The sacrifice at Paneas
The first episode belongs to Caesarea Philippi, the city at the foot of Mount Hermon that the Greeks called Paneas, where a great spring — reckoned one of the sources of the Jordan — issued from a cave sacred to Pan. At the annual festival the pagans threw a victim into the spring, and by the working of the demon of the place it disappeared from the water; the vanishing was displayed as the god's acceptance, and was famous as a wonder throughout the region.
Asterius, present at the festival, looked up to heaven and prayed through Christ that the demon deceiving the people might be put to flight. At the prayer the sacrifice rose and floated on the surface, before the whole crowd; the marvel failed and never happened again, and the festival was abandoned. It is from this that the Greek books style him the Wonderworker.
The burial of Marinus, and his own martyrdom
The second episode is at Caesarea in Palestine. The soldier Marinus, denied his centurionate for confessing Christ, was beheaded outside the city (see Marinus of Caesarea). Asterius was there. When the execution was over he took off the robe of his senatorial rank, a garment of extravagant costliness, spread it on the ground, and gathered into it the head and the body of the martyr; then he raised the bundle onto his own shoulders, carried it himself — a senator doing a slave's office in the open street — and laid the relics in a grave with all reverence.
Eusebius ends his account there. The Byzantine synaxarion carries it one step further: for this public and undeniable confession, Asterius was condemned and beheaded, in the same year, about 260, and is honoured as a martyr.
Feast and commemoration
August 7 (church date; New Calendar civil August 7, Old Calendar civil August 20), within the afterfeast of the Transfiguration and within the Dormition fast (August 1–14). In the Greek books Asterius is the day's martyr, kept alone; in the Slavonic books he is kept jointly with Marinus the Soldier, whose burial made him a martyr. He has no proper office and is sung under the common of a martyr.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Asterius, 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.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Asterius is painted as a layman of rank: middle-aged and bearded, in the long tunic and the mantle of a Roman dignitary — the broad-bordered senatorial robe is his identifying attribute — holding the martyr's cross. His two scenes are the spring at Paneas, the saint standing with hands raised while the sacrifice floats up on the water before the astonished crowd, and, far more commonly, the burial of Marinus: the senator stooping in his splendid robe to gather up the headless body, or carrying it on his shoulders. He is generally shown beside Marinus, the soldier and the senator paired. No pre-1900 image identified specifically as this Asterius has been located for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Did he die a martyr? Eusebius reports the burial of Marinus and says nothing of a sentence against Asterius; the Greek synaxarion and all the Orthodox calendars make him a martyr, beheaded. The two are not incompatible — Eusebius often ends an anecdote where its point is made — but the martyrdom rests on the synaxarion, not on the historian, and this entry says so.
- What the codices call him. The Greek synaxaristic tradition observes that the sources do not record when or where he suffered; most manuscript codices style him simply "a martyr and senator, perfected by the sword," while the Synaxaristes of Nikodemos the Hagiorite calls him "a venerable-martyr and wonderworker." The "venerable-martyr" styling — which would make him a monastic — has no support in Eusebius and is not followed here.
- Whether Paneas and Caesarea are one man. Eusebius tells both stories of the same Astyrius, and the calendars follow him. The identification is his, not a later harmonisation.
- Not to be confused with the several other Asterii of the calendar — the martyr Asterius of Aegae kept with Alexander (see Alexander and Asterius of Aegae), or the fourth-century Asterius of Amasea, bishop and preacher.