Callinica and Aquilina
The Holy Martyrs Callinica and Aquilina, who suffered with the Great-Martyr Christopher
Martyr · d. c. 250, in Lycia
Commemorated 9 May — Martyrdom with the Great-Martyr Christopher under Decius
Callinica and Aquilina were two women of Lycia, of ill fame, whom the persecutor sent in to the imprisoned Great-Martyr Christopher to break his resolve by seduction; instead they were converted by him, went out to confess Christ and to overthrow the idols of the temple, and were tortured and put to death about the year 250, under Decius. The Church keeps their memory with his on May 9, and the synaxaria never separate them from him: they are among the clearest instances of the martyr-passions' favourite pattern, in which the instrument chosen to destroy the confessor becomes the first fruit of his witness.
The mission of seduction
The Greek passion of Saint Christopher relates that when torture had failed to move the gigantic confessor, the persecutor tried a subtler assault. Two women, whom the accounts describe as hetairai — harlots, women of notorious life — were sent into his prison and promised reward if they would seduce him into denying Christ. Their names are given as Callinica (Καλλινίκη, "fair victory," a name whose meaning the hymnographers do not fail to notice) and Aquilina (Ἀκυλίνα).
The plan failed completely. What the passion transmits is not an argument but a conversion: the martyr's bearing and his words persuaded the two women, and they came out of the prison Christians. Some recensions add that they went into the temple of the city and destroyed or defiled the idols there — casting down the statues with their own girdles in one telling — and then confessed Christ publicly before the magistrate.
Martyrdom
Declaring themselves Christians, they were seized at once. The accounts give the torments briefly and without elaboration: they were beaten, in some recensions hung up and their bodies torn or crushed, and they died under the torture, before Christopher himself was beheaded. The tradition therefore reckons them proto-martyrs of his little company, the first-fruits of the two hundred soldiers and the two women whom his confession brought to Christ. No relics are transmitted, and no separate cultus grew up: they are venerated always and only with him.
Feast and commemoration
May 9 (church date; New Calendar civil May 9, Old Calendar civil May 22), kept in the office of Christopher of Lycia, whose synaxarion notice names them. Antiochian, Greek, Slavic and OCA calendars all include them in the day's title, which in its full form runs: the holy Great-Martyr Christopher, and with him the holy martyrs Callinica and Aquilina, and the two hundred soldiers. The day is shared with the Prophet Isaiah and the translation of the relics of Nicholas the Wonderworker to Bari, and no proper office of the two women alone is appointed.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of women martyrs)
Thy lambs Callinica and Aquilina cry aloud to thee, O Jesus: thee, my Bridegroom, do I love, and seeking thee I contend, and am crucified and buried with thee in thy baptism; I suffer for thy sake, that I may reign with thee; I die for thee, that I may live in thee. Receive us as spotless sacrifices offered unto thee in love, and by our intercessions, as thou art merciful, save our souls.
Iconography
The two are not given an independent icon type. They appear in the vita-icons and menologion cycles of Saint Christopher, in the scene of the prison: two women in the long tunic and maphorion, standing or kneeling before the fettered martyr, and in the adjoining compartment cast down by the executioners or standing crowned. Where they are shown alone, they follow the common type of women martyrs — long tunic and cloak, the head covered, the cross of martyrdom in the right hand — with their names inscribed. No pre-1900 image of the two alone has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Names and forms. The Greek gives Καλλινίκη and Ἀκυλίνα; English calendars print Callinica, Callinice, Callinike or (following the OCA) Callinika, and Aquilina or Akylina. Some Slavonic lists give the first name as Kallinikia. The two are a fixed pair in every recension.
- Not to be confused with the other saints of these names. Aquilina here is not Aquilina of Zagliveri, the Greek virgin new-martyr of 1764 (September 27), nor the virgin-martyr Aquilina of Byblos in Phoenicia (June 13), nor the Aquilina commemorated with the deacon Rufinus and two hundred soldiers at Sinope (April 7 in the Greek usage) — a company whose "two hundred soldiers" invites exactly the confusion with Christopher's two hundred that this note exists to prevent. Callinica here is likewise distinct from the martyr Callinice sometimes listed with Basilissa (March 22 in some Greek lists).
- Historicity. The passion of Christopher is a martyr-romance in its transmitted form, and the two women are known from it alone. That they are named at all, consistently and in every branch of the tradition, is the whole of the evidence; the Church commemorates them on that basis, and this entry claims no more.