Cornutus of Iconium

The Holy Hieromartyr Cornutus, Bishop of Iconium

Hieromartyr · Bishop · d. c. 249–259

Cornutus, bishop of Iconium — the Slavic calendars call him Coronatus, bishop of Nicomedia, and the see is transmitted both ways — was martyred under the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, in the years around 249–259. When the governor Perennius scoured the region and the Christians hid themselves, the aged bishop presented himself of his own accord; his legs were bound tightly with thin cords that cut to the bone, and he was led through the city in torment before being beheaded. He is commemorated on September 12.

The record of Cornutus is a synaxarion notice, but a vivid one. In the mid-third century, under the successive persecutions of Decius (249–251) and Valerian (253–260), the governor Perennius pressed the Christians of the region so hard by interrogation and pursuit that they scattered into hiding. Cornutus, their bishop, would not owe his safety to the concealment that scattered his flock: he came before Perennius voluntarily and confessed Christ. The torment devised for him is remembered with the concreteness typical of the martyrologies: his legs were bound about with thin, tight cords, and he was led through the city while the cords dug into the flesh and the blood ran from the wounds. After these sufferings he was beheaded. The verses of the Greek synaxarion give the notice its epigram: "Despising the glory of the present, Cornutus purchases with the sword the glory to come."

Feast and commemoration

September 12 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 25), within the leavetaking of the Nativity of the Theotokos, whose festal service dominates the day. The commemoration is universal in the Byzantine rite; the jurisdictional headings differ as described above (Greek: Iconium; Slavic and OCA: Nicomedia, with Iconium bracketed).

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a hieromartyr)

As a sharer of the ways of the Apostles and a successor to their throne, thou didst find thy deeds, O God-inspired one, an ascent to divine vision; wherefore, rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst suffer for the faith even unto blood: Hieromartyr Cornutus, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

No pre-modern icon of Cornutus has been identified in the collections searched; the Menologion of Basil II, which illustrates this date, gives its miniatures to Autonomus, Theodore of Alexandria and Julian of Galatia. He would be depicted as an aged bishop in phelonion and omophorion, bearing the Gospel book, or in the scene of his suffering — bound about the legs and led through the city.

Disputed questions

The see: Iconium or Nicomedia. The Greek synaxarion and Menaion style him bishop of Iconium (Κουρνοῦτος, ἐπίσκοπος Ἰκονίου), and the narrative itself is Iconian — Perennius is remembered as governor of the Iconium district. The Slavic calendars nevertheless head the entry "of Nicomedia," and the OCA prints "Bishop of Nicomedia [Iconium]," recording both. This repository follows the Greek tradition and the internal evidence of the story in the slug and title, and records the Nicomedian heading as the received Slavic form rather than deciding the question; a transfer of the notice between the two cities' synaxaria at some point in transmission is the likeliest explanation, but the surviving witnesses do not show which direction it travelled.
The name. The Greek Κουρνοῦτος (from the Latin cognomen Cornutus) appears in Slavonic as Корнут (Kornut) and in the OCA's English as "Coronatus" — the latter an anglicised smoothing, not a separately transmitted name.
The date. The notices span the Decian and Valerianic persecutions; the OCA gives 253–259, other calendars the wider c. 249–259. No year is transmitted.