Conon of Isauria
The Holy Martyr Conon of Isauria
Martyr · Venerable · Wonderworker · b. 1st century, at Bidana near Isauria — d. c. late 1st – early 2nd century, at Bidana (in peace, after his tortures)
Commemorated 5 March
Conon of Isauria (first–second century) was an apostolic-age wonderworker of the village of Bidana near Isauria in Asia Minor, a region evangelised by the Apostle Paul. Guarded from childhood, the tradition holds, by the Archangel Michael, he was married against his will and persuaded his bride Anna to keep virginity with him; he then converted his household and, after their deaths, gave himself wholly to prayer and asceticism. God granted him such authority over demons that he is said to have compelled them to labour and sealed them beneath his house, and he converted much of his region by his preaching and miracles. In old age he was seized and tortured in a persecution, but the people of his country rose in arms and rescued him; he lived some two years more and reposed in peace. The Church keeps him on March 5, styling him martyr — indeed hosiomartyr — for the confession and sufferings he endured.
Origins at Bidana
Conon was born in the village of Bidana (Βιδανή; also transmitted Badana or Bidana), near the city of Isauria in the rugged uplands of southern Asia Minor, on the borders of Lycaonia and Cilicia. His people, the tradition notes, had received the faith of Christ through the preaching of the Apostle Paul, whose missionary journeys crossed those very regions; Conon thus belongs to the first Christian generations of a country only lately won from paganism, and his Life is set in the apostolic age — the earliest of the several saints of his name. From his childhood, the accounts say, he was watched over by the Archangel Michael, who appeared to him and remained, throughout his life, his companion and helper; the intimacy with the Archangel is the note his hymnography returns to, singing that he was "counted worthy of an angelic vision."
Marriage kept in virginity, and the conversion of his house
While still a pagan youth, Conon was betrothed and married, against his own inclination, to a maiden named Anna. On their wedding night — so the tradition relates, in a scene it loves to dwell on — he set before his bride the emptiness of fleshly union and the surpassing worth of the life in Christ, and won her consent to live together in virginity as brother and sister. From this he went on to bring to the faith not only Anna but her parents and his own father Nestor; and Nestor, having become a Christian, rebuked the worshippers of idols so boldly that they killed him — so that the father of the saint is himself honoured as a martyr. Anna and her parents reposed soon after, and Conon, released from every earthly tie, gave himself entirely to prayer, fasting, and the contemplation of God.
Power over demons and the conversion of the region
The most vivid strand of his tradition is his authority over the demons. God, the accounts say, subjected the unclean spirits to him so completely that he set them to work: some he compelled to till the fields and tend the crops, others to serve the labours of men, and the remainder he shut up and sealed within earthen vessels buried beneath his house, that they might trouble the land no more. Whatever the exact shape of these traditions, they express the memory of a saint whose holiness broke the power of the old idolatry over a whole country: by his preaching, his miracles, and the manifest defeat of the demons his people had worshipped, Conon converted much of the region of Isauria to Christ, so that he is remembered less as the passive victim of a persecution than as the apostle and wonderworker of his homeland.
Sufferings and repose
In his old age a persecution of the Christians broke out in Isauria, and Conon was seized by the magistrates and cruelly tortured for refusing to sacrifice to the idols. But when the people of his country — many of them his own converts — learned that their father and benefactor was in the hands of the torturers, they took up arms and marched to rescue him, and his persecutors fled before them. The faithful bore him away, and it is said that those who anointed themselves with his blood were healed. Conon did not die under the torture: he survived his wounds and lived about two years more, and then reposed in peace. He was buried beside his father and his wife. A late notice adds that, after his death, some who broke open the buried vessels beneath his house released the imprisoned demons as a rushing fire, until the prayers and fasting of the faithful cleansed the place — a legend that carries forward the theme of his lifelong war with the powers of the air.
Feast and commemoration
Conon of Isauria is kept on March 5 (church date; New Calendar civil March 5; Old Calendar civil March 18), where the Greek Menaion and the Slavic calendars lead the day with him and appoint him a proper apolytikion. He shares his day with a second and quite distinct saint of the same name, Conon the Gardener of Pamphylia, and with Mark the Ascetic; the synaxaria are careful to keep the two Conons apart, and this entry does the same (see Disputed questions).
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Counted worthy of an angelic vision, thou wast led into the faith of Christ and didst receive the power of wonders, O wise one; wherefore thou didst humble the arrogance of the demons and, contending, didst quench the flame of error. O Venerable-Martyr Conon, O champion, make the Friend of mankind gracious unto us.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No pre-modern image securely identified as this Conon — as against Conon the Gardener or the other saints of the name — has been found under a firm attribution; the entry therefore stores no icon and notes him as wanting one. He would be depicted as an aged, bearded ascetic, in the manner of the early confessors, often with the Archangel Michael at his side — the companion of his whole life — and, in the narrative iconography, standing over bound or fleeing demons, the sign of the authority the tradition ascribes to him.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Conon the Gardener of Mandon in Pamphylia (the simple gardener martyred under Decius, †c. 251), with whom he shares the day of March 5 and is easily confused, and who is a wholly different person of a different age and a different manner of death; nor with the sixth-century Conon of Penthucla, the Palestinian baptizer of the Jordan (kept February 19), nor with the several other saints named Conon of the calendar — including the monk-martyrs Conon and his son Conon of Iconium of the next day, March 6 (†c. 270–275). This Conon is the apostolic-age wonderworker of Bidana in Isauria.
- "Martyr" though he reposed in peace. The Greek styles him ὁσιομάρτυς (venerable-martyr) and the Slavic calendars call him martyr, yet his own Life has him survive his tortures and repose in peace two years afterward. He is venerated as a martyr by the confession and sufferings he endured, not by a death under torture; the classification here (martyr, with venerable for his monastic-ascetic life and wonderworker for his miracles) follows the calendars' lead while the biography records the nuance.
- His century. As an apostolic-age saint of a region evangelised by Paul, he is placed in the first–second century; the sources give no precise dates, and some notices reckon him simply "of the apostolic times."