Bianor and Silvanus of Pisidia
The Holy Martyrs Bianor and Silvanus of Pisidia
Martyr · d. c. 300, in Pisidia
Commemorated 10 July — Martyrdom by the sword in Pisidia
Bianor and Silvanus are martyrs of Pisidia, the rough highland province of southern Asia Minor, who suffered in the persecution of Diocletian about the year 300. Bianor was arrested and tortured for confessing Christ; Silvanus was not a defendant but a spectator — a bystander at the tribunal who, watching what Bianor endured, cried out that he too was a Christian, and was thereupon condemned with him. For that outcry his tongue was cut out before he was beheaded; Bianor was beheaded after long torment. Theirs is one of the many notices of the calendar in which a martyrdom makes a martyr on the spot.
Bianor
The synaxarion makes Bianor a man of Pisidia — the mountainous country north of Pamphylia, evangelised early (the Apostle Paul preached at Pisidian Antioch, Acts 13) and by the fourth century thoroughly Christian in its towns. He was brought before the governor of the province, ordered to renounce Christ and to sacrifice, and refused. The tortures are described in the general terms of the genre — he was scourged and racked and endured it without yielding.
Silvanus
Among those standing by at the tribunal was Silvanus. What he saw undid his silence: he called out in the hearing of the court that he was a Christian and shared the faith of the man being tortured. He was seized at once. Because the offence had been committed with the tongue, the sentence answered it: his tongue was cut out, and he was then beheaded. Bianor, unbroken to the end, was beheaded after him.
Feast and commemoration
July 10 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 23), kept universally in the Greek and Slavonic synaxaria and by the OCA. Some calendars separate them into two notices — "Martyr Bianor of Pisidia" and "Martyr Silvanus of Pisidia" — but they belong to one passion and are kept together here, in accordance with §4 of the PRD on companions martyred together with no independent cultus.
Hymns
Apolytikion — 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.
Iconography
The pair are painted as young laymen-martyrs, side by side, beardless or with the first beard, in tunic and mantle, each holding the small cross; Bianor is generally the elder and larger figure and stands at the left. Where the passion is shown, the two attributes are the sword and — for Silvanus — the hand raised to the mouth, the sign by which Byzantine painters indicate a martyr whose tongue was cut out, as with Maximus the Confessor and the Theophanes and Theodore the Branded. No pre-1900 icon of this pair has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The date. The passion is undated in the sources. The received attribution is to the persecution of Diocletian (284–305), and the entry follows it; some calendars leave the century open, and the OCA notes explicitly that the time is not known. The century of repose is given here as the fourth on the reckoning of c. 300.
- Not to be confused with the other martyrs named Silvanus of the Byzantine calendar — in particular Silvanus of Emesa, the bishop martyred with his deacon and reader, Silvan of Gaza, and Silvanus of the Kiev Caves, the schemamonk of the Far Caves who is commemorated on June 10 and whom the OCA lists again on July 10, the same day as this Pisidian martyr. The coincidence of name and day is a standing trap: the two are different men, of different centuries and different countries.
- Not to be confused with the anonymous Martyrs of Pisidia commemorated on July 16, a company of the same province with no transmitted names or date; these two are a distinct commemoration and are not members of that company.
- Bianor / Vianor. The Greek Βιάνωρ is transliterated Vianor from the modern pronunciation and Bianor from the ancient; both forms occur in English calendars for this saint.