Cronides, Leontius and Serapion
The Holy Martyrs Cronides, Leontius and Serapion of Alexandria
Martyr · d. 3rd century
Commemorated 13 September — Martyrdom at Alexandria
Cronides (Chronides), Leontius and Serapion were Christians of Egypt who suffered martyrdom at Alexandria in the third century. Refusing to deny Christ under torture, they were bound hand and foot and cast into the sea; the waves carried their bodies to shore, where the Christians of the city buried them. The Byzantine synaxaria commemorate them on September 13, at the head of a company of martyrs of the day that also includes Seleucus, Stratonicus, and the martyrs of Tomis.
Of the three martyrs the synaxaria preserve only the essentials: they were Egyptians, confessed Christ at Alexandria in the third century, and after fierce torments were killed by drowning — bound hand and foot and thrown into the sea. Their bodies were washed ashore, and the faithful gave them burial. The persecution is not named in the notices; the third century in Egypt offers the persecutions of Maximinus Thrax, Decius, and Valerian, and no source permits a closer dating.
The Greek Synaxarion of Constantinople for September 13 commemorates them not alone but at the head of a single company of eleven martyrs: "Cronides, Leontius, Serapion, Straton, Seleucus, Macrobius, Gordian, Zoticus, Elias (Eleis), Lucian, and Valerian." The Slavic tradition, followed by the OCA, divides the company by place of suffering: the three Alexandrians here; the martyrs of Tomis in Scythia separately (see Macrobius, Gordian and their companions); and it attaches to the Alexandrian group two further martyrs whose deaths it relates individually — Seleucus, a Galatian who after many tortures was thrown to wild beasts together with his wife, and Stratonicus of Nicomedia in Bithynia, who was bound by the governor's order to two bent tree trunks and torn in two when they were released. The transmitted membership of the company thus varies between the traditions, and the lists are recorded here as the sources give them rather than harmonised.
Feast and commemoration
September 13 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 26), within the day of the Encaenia of the Church of the Resurrection and the forefeast of the Elevation of the Cross; the martyrs are commemorated in the synaxarion of the day, without proper hymns in the received Menaion. The commemoration is universal, with the differences in grouping noted above.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyrs, O Lord, by their contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee our God; for possessing Thy strength they cast down the tyrants and shattered the powerless insolence of the demons. By their intercessions, O Christ God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No fixed iconographic type of the three is transmitted; where depicted they would follow the convention for companies of early martyrs — young men in tunic and chlamys bearing crosses, the sea of their martyrdom sometimes indicated below. No storable pre-modern image identified with these martyrs has been found; the entry is listed among the wanted icons.
Disputed questions
- Composition of the company. As above: the Greek synaxarion reads all eleven names as one commemoration; the Slavic books split them into an Alexandrian and a Scythian group and narrate Seleucus and Stratonicus separately.
- Straton / Stratonicus. The OCA notes of Stratonicus "see also September 9," where a martyr Straton (of Bithynia, likewise killed between bent trees) is commemorated; the September 9 and September 13 notices appear to transmit the same martyr under variant forms of the name, and the identification is left open here.