Atticus and Sisinnius
The Holy Martyrs Atticus and Sisinnius
Martyr · d. date unknown; possibly at Nicomedia in the persecution of Maximian
Commemorated 26 August — Martyrdom by the sword
Atticus and Sisinnius are two martyrs of whom the Greek synaxarion preserves nothing but the names, the day, and the manner of death: they were beheaded. They stand on August 26 immediately after the martyrs of Nicomedia, and the Synaxaristes itself raises — without settling — the possibility that they were taken with St Adrian and belong to the company of the twenty-three. This entry is deliberately short: there is no life to write, and none has been invented.
What is transmitted
The whole of the record is a couplet of the metrical synaxarion — the two saints figured in the usual way as athletes who ran their course in the stadium, the sword at the end of it — and the notice ἐτελειώθησαν διὰ ξίφους, "they were perfected by the sword." No provenance, no rank, no emperor, no city, no year is given.
The Nicomedian possibility
Because the day belongs to Adrian and Natalia and the twenty-three martyrs taken with them in the cave outside Nicomedia, and because the companions of that company are nameless in every source, the Greek synaxaristic tradition notes that Atticus and Sisinnius may have been arrested with St Adrian and may be two of the twenty-three whose names happened to survive when the rest did not. The suggestion is attractive and cannot be verified. Against it stands the plain fact that the books list them as a separate commemoration with their own couplet, which is normally the sign of a separate underlying notice.
If the identification is right, the date is c. 305–306 and the place Nicomedia under Maximian; if it is wrong, they are undated, and the entry is left so, with no century field and no assertion.
Feast and commemoration
August 26 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 8), in the Greek synaxaria. They are absent from the Russian day-lists for the date and from the Antiochian books. Where kept, the day is served with the common of martyrs.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received from thee, our God, crowns of incorruption; for possessed of thy might, they set at nought the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their supplications, O Christ our God, save thou our souls.
Iconography
No image of these martyrs is known, and none is likely: saints who exist only as a name and a verse in the synaxarion are rarely painted apart from the crowded menologion panels that attempt a whole month at once, where they would appear as two undifferentiated young men in tunic and cloak, each holding a small cross. Nothing distinguishes them iconographically from any other pair of martyrs perfected by the sword. No pre-1900 depiction has been located.
Disputed questions
Not to be confused with Sisinius of Cyzicus, the bishop and confessor, or with the martyrs kept in Sisinius, Cyriacus and the martyrs of Rome. Sisinnius is a common name in the martyrologies and the collisions are frequent. Atticus likewise must be kept distinct from Atticus, Archbishop of Constantinople (†425), who is not a martyr and is commemorated on January 8.