Barbarus, Bacchus, Callimachus and Dionysius
The Holy Martyr Barbarus the Soldier and those with him, Bacchus, Callimachus and Dionysius, in the Morea
Martyr · d. 362, in the Morea (Peloponnese)
Commemorated 6 May — Martyrdom under Julian the Apostate; the relics of Barbarus at Methone
Barbarus was a soldier of the Roman army under Julian the Apostate who, having won honour for the emperor by killing a barbarian champion in single combat, was rewarded with the command to sacrifice to the idols and refused, confessing Christ. Neither the tearing of his flesh nor the wheel of fire could hold him, and at the sight of his deliverance three of his fellow-soldiers — Bacchus their commander, Callimachus and Dionysius — confessed Christ and were beheaded on the spot. Barbarus was tormented seven days longer and then beheaded by the sword, about the year 362; his body was laid at Methone in the Peloponnese, and the four are commemorated together on May 6.
Soldiers of Julian
The passion places the four in the army of the emperor Julian (361–363), whose short reign restored the public sacrifices and made the profession of a Christian soldier acutely dangerous again a generation after Constantine. Barbarus is remembered as a soldier of exceptional bodily strength and courage; Bacchus is named as an officer, a commander of his unit, and Callimachus and Dionysius as soldiers with him.
The occasion of the passion, as the synaxarion tells it, was a single combat. The armies stood opposite one another and a champion of the enemy — the text calls him a Frank — challenged the Romans. Barbarus went out against him and killed him, and the victory was credited to him before the whole army. Summoned to receive his honours, he was required to give thanks in the customary way, by sacrificing to the gods for the victory. He answered that the strength had not been his own nor the gods', but Christ's, and that he would not sacrifice.
The torments and the confession of the three
The reward became a trial. He was hung up and his flesh torn, and then bound upon a heated wheel; the account relates that he was preserved unharmed, the bonds loosed and the fire turned aside. Bacchus, Callimachus and Dionysius, who stood watching as soldiers of the same company, cried out that the God of Barbarus was the true God, and were beheaded at once, without process — the shortest of all martyrdoms, and the reason the four are kept as one memory.
Barbarus himself was kept alive under torment for seven days more, and at the end of them was beheaded by the sword. The Christians of the place took up his body and buried it at Methone (Methoni, Modon) on the south-western coast of the Peloponnese, where his memory was kept; the synaxaria accordingly style him "Barbarus the soldier, in the Morea."
Veneration
The commemoration is universal in the Byzantine synaxaria on May 6, where it is listed after the righteous Job, and it passed from them into the Slavic Menologia and the modern jurisdictional calendars. In Greek usage the four are honoured particularly in Messenia, on account of the burial at Methone. They have no proper office; the day's service belongs to Job, and the martyrs are commemorated at the synaxarion notice and with the common of the martyrs.
Feast and commemoration
May 6 (church date; New Calendar civil May 6, Old Calendar civil May 19), together with the righteous Job, who leads the day, and with the two other May 6 commemorations of Greek usage. The Greek calendars name the four together; the Slavic books abbreviate to "the martyr Barbarus and those with him"; OCA's synaxarion gives the fuller form, "Martyr Barbarus the Soldier, and those with him, in Morea."
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their courageous contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions, O Christ God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The four are painted as soldier-martyrs of the fourth century: young or middle-aged men, beardless or lightly bearded, in the short military tunic and cloak, with the cross of martyrdom in the right hand; where the panoply is shown they carry the round shield, lance and sword of the Byzantine warrior-saints, and Bacchus, as commander, may be given the officer's mantle fastened at the shoulder. The narrative scene proper to Barbarus is his single combat — two mounted or armed champions between two armies — followed by the wheel and the beheading. No pre-1900 icon or fresco identifiable to these martyrs has been located for storage here; they are easily and often confused in image collections with the far more famous Bacchus of Syria, and any candidate needs an inscription before it can be accepted.
Disputed questions
"Morea" and the Frank. Both names in the notice are anachronistic for the year 362: Morea is a name for the Peloponnese first current in the later Middle Ages, and a Frankish champion opposing a Roman army in Greece belongs to the Frankish occupation of the Peloponnese after 1204 rather than to the wars of Julian. The reasonable conclusion is that the passion was redacted late — very plausibly at Methone itself, a busy Venetian and Frankish port where the relics lay — and that its local colour was modernised in transmission. Whether the historical substratum is a martyrdom under Julian, a martyrdom of another persecution relocated to the Peloponnese, or a local martyr assimilated to the type of the soldier-martyr, the sources do not allow us to say. The synaxarion tradition itself is unanimous on the emperor and the year.
Not to be confused with. This Bacchus is not the companion of the great martyr Sergius of Syria (October 7), nor is this Barbarus the penitent robber Barbarus the Myrrh-streamer of Thessaly, who is commemorated on the same day and is frequently confused with him in calendars and indexes. The two Barbari are distinguished by their manner of life and death: the soldier beheaded under Julian, the robber shot with arrows in the woods of Thessaly after twelve years of penance.