Concordius of Spoleto

June 4 (church date; New Calendar civil June 4, Old Calendar civil June 17) in the Byzantine calendars, kept with Saint Metrophanes of Constantinople; the same day is his in the Western martyrologies, so that he is one of the pre-schism Latin martyrs whose date is not disputed between the traditions. He is commemorated at the simple rank with the common of a martyr in the Byzantine rite. At Spoleto and in Umbria his memory is local and long-standing, attached to the shrine of his relics.

Concordius is painted as a young or youthful-middle-aged martyr — beardless, or with a short dark beard — in the long belted tunic and mantle of a layman-martyr, holding the cross of the martyrs in his right hand; where his clerical order is to be marked he may be given the narrow orarion of a subdeacon, or the presbyter's phelonion in Italian and later Russian versions which follow his ordination rather than the calendar's classification. His distinguishing attributes, where the scene of his passion is shown, are the chain at the neck and wrists by which he was fastened to the prison wall, and the fallen idol of Zeus which he spat upon; the beheading in prison may be shown in a small compartment.

The stored image is the plate of Saint Concordius from the illustrated pre-1911 Russian Lives of the Saints compiled after the Menaia of Saint Dimitri of Rostov — the second of the three figures given for June 4 in the June volume, captioned in Slavonic Ст҃ый мч҃никъ Конкордíй, "Holy Martyr Concordius." It shows him standing full-length in a light tunic and dark mantle, short-bearded and haloed, holding upright in both hands a tall processional cross with an ornamented head: the martyr-with-cross type exactly.

• Chronology. The passion's internal dates do not agree. Bishop Pius of Rome, who is said to have made him subdeacon, died about 155; the martyrdom is dated about 175, under Marcus Aurelius. That is possible but tight, and some accounts put the martyrdom earlier, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, or later, moving it into the third century. The passion belongs to the class of Italian passiones whose narrative frame is later than the events, and the dates should be held loosely.
• Order and title. He is made subdeacon at Rome, then presbyter by Anthimus — so that at his death he was an ordained presbyter, which would ordinarily earn the classification hieromartyr. The calendars do not so classify him: the Greek and Slavonic books style him simply martyr (μάρτυς, мученикъ), and the Russian icon-plate for the day is captioned "Holy Martyr Concordius." This repository follows the calendars, per its rule that a saint is classified as the Church commemorates, and records the presbyterate in the types list and in this note.
• Place. The passion's Tussa region and the location of the prison are not securely identified; the constant element is the resting-place of the relics near Spoleto, from which his epithet comes. He is not to be confused with the several other Italian Concordii of the martyrologies, nor with the deacon Concordius of the Roman acta of other days.
• Eutychius and Anthimus. Both are named without further identification. Attempts to identify Anthimus with the Roman presbyter-martyr Anthimus of other days, or Eutychius with a martyr of the same name, are conjectural.