Castor the Martyr
The Holy Martyr Castor
Martyr
Commemorated 18 September
Castor is a martyr commemorated on September 18 of whom nothing is transmitted beyond his name and his end: he suffered death for the open confession of the faith of Christ. The Greek and Slavic calendars carry him as a separate commemoration without place or date; the OCA joins him to the martyrs Sophia and Irene of Egypt, commemorated the same day, placing his martyrdom with theirs at Alexandria.
Castor belongs to the great company of martyrs of whom the calendars have preserved a name and nothing more. The Slavic menological notice is a single sentence: the martyr Castor suffered for the open and bold confession of the Christian faith. No city, no persecutor, no year, and no circumstances of his passion are transmitted in the Greek or Slavic tradition. The honest sum of the record is that the Church received his name among the victors and has kept it on this day; his story is known to God.
Feast and commemoration
September 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 1), within the afterfeast of the Elevation of the Cross. The Russian calendar lists "мч. Кастора" as its own line among the day's commemorations; the OCA merges him with Sophia and Irene as described above. He has no proper service.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a single martyr)
Thy martyr Castor, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God; for possessing thy strength he cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No icon of the martyr Castor has been identified in the collections searched, and no iconographic tradition particular to him is recorded. He would be depicted in the generic type of the martyr: a man holding the martyr's cross. Care should be taken not to appropriate images of the same-named Western saint Castor of Karden.
Disputed questions
- Egyptian or unplaced. The OCA's calendar heads the day's entry "Martyrs Sophia, Irene, and Castor of Egypt" and states that Sophia "endured martyrdom with Saints Castor and Irene in Alexandria" — making Castor a companion of the two Egyptian women martyrs of the same day. The Greek synaxarion and the Russian calendar instead list Castor separately, with no place given, after the notice of Sophia and Irene. Whether the shared date reflects a shared passion or a coincidence of the calendar cannot now be determined; this collection keeps the commemorations distinct, as the older witnesses do, with cross-references in both entries.
- Same-named martyrs. He is distinct from the martyr Castor commemorated with Stephen on April 27 in some Greek synaxaria, and from the Western confessor Castor of Karden on the Moselle; the coincidence of a common Greco-Roman name should not join their records.
- Not to be confused with Castor the Venerable, the monastic father whom the Greek synaxarion enters on August 12 as having "reposed in peace." That Castor is classed among the venerable, not the martyrs; both entries are bare names, which is precisely why the two days and the two categories must be kept apart.