Cyprian the Righteous of Antioch

Our Righteous Father Cyprian of Antioch, who reposed in peace

Righteous · d. no year transmitted

Cyprian is a saint of the Greek synaxarion of May 30, entered with two facts only: that he was of Antioch, and that he reposed in peace — that is, that he was not a martyr. No office, no century, no place of burial and no history of any kind is transmitted. Given the two celebrated Cyprians with whom the notice inevitably collides — Cyprian the bishop of Carthage, and Cyprian the former magician of Antioch who is commemorated with Justina on October 2 — the entry is best treated as a distinct commemoration of the Church of Antioch which the Constantinopolitan books preserved without its story, while recording frankly that a doubling of one of the great Cyprians cannot be ruled out.

What the notice says

The Greek synaxaristes gives, under May 30, "Ἅγιος Κυπριανὸς ὁ ἐξ Ἀντιοχείας" — Cyprian "from Antioch" — with the closing formula ἐν εἰρήνῃ τελειοῦται, "he was perfected in peace." Both halves matter. The first locates him in the greatest see of the Christian East, the city of Ignatius and of Chrysostom and the mother church of the Antiochian tradition. The second is the synaxarion's technical way of saying that this saint was not put to death: the calendar distinguishes carefully between those perfected by sword, fire, water, beasts or torments and those who "reposed in peace," and the phrase places Cyprian among the confessors and ascetics rather than the martyrs. It is on the strength of that formula that this entry classes him as righteous.

Nothing further is recorded. He is given no office — neither bishop, nor priest, nor monk — no reign, no year, no monastery, no relics and no miracles.

Feast and commemoration

May 30 (church date; New Calendar civil May 30, Old Calendar civil June 12). The commemoration is Greek in transmission, standing near the end of the Greek day-lists after Isaac of Dalmatia and the martyrs of Nicomedia. No proper service is appointed; where he is commemorated liturgically the common of a righteous man is sung with his name.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common of a righteous man)

The image of God was preserved in thee with exactness, O father; for taking up thy cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to look past the flesh, which passes away, and to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O righteous Cyprian, thy spirit rejoices with the angels.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

There is no iconography of this Cyprian, and the name is a trap: virtually every image inscribed Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΚΥΠΡΙΑΝΟΣ in the Orthodox world belongs to Cyprian of October 2, painted as a bishop in phelonion and omophorion with the Gospel, very often paired with the veiled virgin Justina and frequently accompanied by the well-known exorcism prayer attributed to him; such images must not be used for the saint of May 30. Were the righteous Cyprian of this notice to be painted, the calendar's convention for a saint of unspecified state of life who reposed in peace would give an elder in tunic and mantle, hand raised in blessing or holding a scroll, identified by inscription alone.

No pre-1900 image of him has been identified for this collection; candidates under the name were rejected as belonging to the October 2 Cyprian, and the Menologion of Basil II covers only September to February.

Disputed questions

The two great Cyprians. Any May 30 notice of "Cyprian of Antioch" stands under suspicion of being a stray double of one of two much larger figures:
- Cyprian and Justina (October 2) — the celebrated sorcerer of Antioch converted by the prayers of the virgin Justina, afterwards bishop, and finally beheaded with her. That Cyprian is precisely of Antioch, which makes the collision acute; but he is a martyr, and the May 30 formula expressly says the opposite.
- Cyprian of Carthage — the great third-century Latin bishop and writer, martyred in 258, whose legend was already fused with the Antiochene sorcerer's in the fourth century (Gregory the Theologian's panegyric being the locus classicus of the confusion, as discussed in this collection's entry for October 2). He too was a martyr, and he was not of Antioch. Since both of the famous Cyprians died by the sword and this one did not, the notice is not a straightforward doublet of either. The likelier explanations are that a genuine Antiochene confessor of the name was remembered locally and passed into the Constantinopolitan lists stripped of his history, or that a compiler, working from a local Antiochene calendar, entered a name he could not identify with the neutral formula reserved for saints who were not martyred. The repository records the commemoration as its own and flags the question rather than resolving it.
No century, no types beyond "righteous." The century field is omitted because no date whatever is transmitted; the entry indexes under the unknown century. The single type righteous rests on the "reposed in peace" formula and on nothing else — no source consulted calls him a bishop, priest or monk, and no such office is asserted here.
Absent from every non-Greek calendar consulted. The commemoration does not appear on the OCA day-page, in the Russian calendar, or in the Slavonic Menaion for May 30. An Antiochian verification of the day — impossible through the sources available for this entry — is the obvious next step, since if the notice preserves anything it is most likely to be a local memory of the Church of Antioch itself.