Batas of Nisibis
The Holy Venerable Martyr Batas, Monk of Persia
Venerable Martyr · d. c. 364, at Nisibis
Commemorated 1 May — Martyrdom at Nisibis
Batas was a monk of the Church of Persia in the fourth century who was put to death at Nisibis for confessing Christ, about the year 364, in the persecution of the Christians carried on under Shapur II. The synaxaria preserve almost nothing beyond the fact and the place, and this entry does not go beyond what they say; but the fact is eloquent enough, for Nisibis had just passed from Roman into Persian hands, and Batas belongs to the first generation of monks who paid for their faith under the new masters of the city that had been Saint Ephrem's.
The monk
The synaxarion notice is a single sentence: Batas — Βατᾶς in the Greek books, Bata or Bathas in the Syriac and Latin forms of the name — was a monastic who lived in Persia and laboured in one of the monasteries of that land. Nothing is transmitted of his origins, his house, his rule of life or his age. Persian and Syriac monasticism in his generation was already old and vigorous: the ascetics of the bnay qyāmā, the "sons of the covenant," and the mountain solitaries of Mesopotamia were the backbone of the Church of the East, and it was precisely the monks and the clergy whom the Persian authorities singled out in every persecution, because they could not be conciliated by property or family.
Martyrdom at Nisibis
He was brought to Nisibis — the great fortress-city on the Roman-Persian frontier, in what is now Nusaybin in south-eastern Turkey — and there killed for confessing the Christian faith. The Greek synaxaria attribute the persecution to the "emperor of the Persians," that is to Shapur II (r. 309–379), whose forty-year war on the Christians of his empire produced more martyrs than any other single persecution in the ancient world; and the calendars date Batas to about 364.
The date and the place together carry their own weight. Nisibis had been Roman for generations, the see of Bishop Jacob and the city of the great deacon and poet Saint Ephrem the Syrian, who taught in its school; in 363, after the death of Julian on the Persian campaign, the emperor Jovian surrendered Nisibis to Shapur by treaty, and its Christian population was permitted to withdraw. Ephrem himself left for Edessa. Those Christians who remained, and the monks of the surrounding districts, now lived under the Persian crown at the height of its hostility to the faith; and it is in that first year or two of Persian Nisibis that the calendars place the death of the monk Batas. He is thus one of the earliest witnesses of the Church of Nisibis under Persian rule.
Whether he was beheaded, stoned or scourged to death the sources do not say. Because he was a monastic put to death for the faith, the Greek books style him hosiomartys — venerable-martyr — and the Slavonic simply "monk-martyr"; the English calendars vary between "Venerable Hieromartyr Batas" (a rendering of hosiomartys that wrongly implies priesthood) and "Martyr Bata the Persian."
Feast and commemoration
May 1 (church date; New Calendar civil May 1, Old Calendar civil May 14), on which he is listed in the Greek synaxaria, the Slavonic Menologion and the American calendar, together with the Prophet Jeremiah, whose commemoration dominates the day. No proper service is appointed to him; his memory is kept in the synaxarion notice.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Batas, 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
No ancient image of Batas is known, and no distinctive attributes have been transmitted. Where he is painted at all he takes the general type of the monastic martyr: a bearded ascetic in the dark tunic, mantle and koukoulion of the Eastern monk, holding the martyr's cross in his right hand, with the martyr's red mantle sometimes over the habit. Because the day belongs liturgically to the Prophet Jeremiah, Batas does not appear in the menologion cycles for May 1, which give the prophet alone; the Menologion of Basil II, which supplies miniatures for so many Persian martyrs, covers only September to February and so has no image of him.
Disputed questions
- The form of the name. Greek Βατᾶς yields Batas and Vatas; the Slavonic and Russian books have Вата, whence the English "Bata"; Western martyrologies have Bathas. All refer to the same monk of Nisibis.
- "Hieromartyr" or "venerable-martyr." Several English calendars style him Venerable Hieromartyr, which would make him a priest; the Greek ὁσιομάρτυς means only that he was a monastic martyr, and no source ascribes holy orders to him. He is typed here as a venerable-martyr accordingly.
- The date. "About 364" is the calendars' reckoning; some notices say only "in the fourth century," and others place him in the general persecution of Shapur II without a year. The cession of Nisibis in 363 makes the traditional date coherent but does not confirm it.
- Not to be confused with the many other Persian martyrs of the fourth century whose memories crowd the Byzantine calendar — Aithalas, Akepsimas, Joseph, the martyrs of Bet Huzaye and their companions — with none of whom he is grouped in the synaxaria.