Cyrilla of Cyrene

The Holy Martyr Cyrilla of Cyrene in Libya, a Widow

Martyr · d. c. 304–310, at Cyrene in Libya

Commemorated 5 July — Martyrdom at Cyrene under Diocletian

Cyrilla was a widow of Cyrene in the Libyan Pentapolis who was put to death for Christ in the last of the imperial persecutions, about the years 304–310. The synaxarion remembers her by a single unforgettable scene: brought before the magistrate and ordered to sacrifice, she was not asked to speak but simply had live coals with incense laid in her open hand, so that if she let them fall the smoke would rise from the altar and she would be recorded as having offered. She held them until her hand burned through rather than let one grain of incense fall to the idol. She was then hung up and torn, and died under the torture. Her memory belongs with the martyrs of Cyrene, among whom the bishop Theodore is kept on the preceding day.

The church of Cyrene

Cyrene, the chief city of the Libyan Pentapolis and the metropolis of a Greek-speaking province with a large Jewish and a growing Christian population, appears in the Acts of the Apostles among the homelands of those who heard the preaching at Pentecost, and gave the Gospel Simon the Cyrenian. Under Diocletian and his successors it produced a considerable company of martyrs, of whom the synaxaria of early July name several: the bishop Theodore of Cyrene, whose hands were mutilated because he had copied out the Scriptures, and with him or after him the women Cyrilla, Aroa and Lucia. The Greek and Latin calendars distribute these commemorations over July 4 and July 5 in slightly different arrangements, and Cyrilla's own day, in Byzantine and in Roman usage alike, is July 5.

The trial and the coals

Cyrilla is described as a widow — a woman, that is, without the protection of a household, and one of the class the persecutors could most easily coerce. Arrested in the persecution and brought before the governor, she refused to sacrifice.

The device used against her is what the tradition remembers. Rather than argue with her, her judges took the censer, put burning coals and incense into her bare hand, and held it over the altar of the idol: the incense would burn of itself, the smoke would ascend, and the act of sacrifice would be complete without her consent — she needed only to endure the pain a moment, or to drop the coals and be recorded as having offered. Cyrilla understood the trick and refused it. She held the coals in her hand and let them burn into the flesh, shaking nothing into the fire beneath, until her hand was ruined; and she did not sacrifice.

For this she was hung up and her body torn with hooks, and she died under the torment, or shortly after it, confessing Christ. The synaxarion adds nothing further; no relics and no shrine of hers are transmitted, and her cultus rests on the calendar-notice alone.

Feast and commemoration

July 5 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 18). She is kept in the Greek, Slavonic and Latin calendars alike — the Roman Martyrology entering her simply as "at Cyrene in Libya, Saint Cyrilla, martyr" — and, in Orthodox usage, is named in the synaxarion of the day after Athanasius of Athos. No proper office is appointed; the common of a woman martyr is sung where she is commemorated liturgically.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a woman martyr)

Thy lamb, O Jesus, crieth out with a loud voice: Thee, my Bridegroom, do I love, and seeking Thee I contend, and I am crucified and buried with Thy baptism; I suffer for Thy sake, that I may reign with Thee; I die for Thee, that I may live in Thee. Accept me as an unblemished sacrifice, offered to Thee with love. By her intercessions, as Thou art merciful, save our souls.

Iconography

Cyrilla takes the ordinary type of the woman martyr: standing, in a long tunic and a mantle drawn over the head, with the cross held before her in the right hand and the left hand open in prayer. Where an attribute is given her it is the one the synaxarion supplies — the censer or the burning coals in the open palm, sometimes with the small pagan altar beneath; the raised, wounded hand is what distinguishes her from any other unnamed woman martyr on a menaion panel. She is occasionally grouped with Theodore of Cyrene and the other Libyan martyrs. No pre-1900 icon of her has been identified for this collection, and none is likely to be found of her alone: the Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for minor martyrs, covers only September to February.

Disputed questions

The form of the name. The Greek transmits Κυπρίλλα (Kyprilla); the Latin martyrologies and the Slavonic calendars give Cyrilla / Кирилла. The two are the same name variously copied, and the same martyr; this entry keeps the commoner English form Cyrilla and records the Greek.
The date and the company. Some calendars place her with Theodore of Cyrene on July 4, others on July 5 alone or with the martyrs Aroa and Lucia; the Slavonic calendars pair her on July 5 with a Martyr Anna at Rome, who has no connexion with Cyrene and whom the Russian books gloss as Agnes (see Agnes of Rome, January 21). The pairing is a fact about the calendar, not about the martyrdoms.
The reign. "Under Diocletian" is the synaxarion's formula; since the persecution in Libya continued under Maximinus Daza, dates from 304 to 310 are all defensible and none is attested precisely.