Dometius the Wonderworker
Our Venerable Father Dometius
Venerable · Wonderworker · d. 4th century
Commemorated 8 March — Commemoration of the venerable one
Dometius was a monastic saint of the fourth century, commemorated on March 8 and styled by the tradition a wonderworker. Very little is transmitted of him: the Greek Menaion keeps him among the day's saints as a venerable monk (hosios), and the Slavic reckoning for the day remembers a Dometius of Persia in the same century. Because of the bare notice and the shared name, the tradition itself is uncertain whether the Dometius of March 8 is a distinct ascetic or the same as Dometius the Persian, the venerable-martyr of the reign of Julian the Apostate more fully commemorated on August 7; the question is recorded here rather than resolved.
The March 8 notice preserves the name, the monastic state, and the epithet wonderworker, and no connected biography. What the tradition transmits with any fullness under the name Dometius belongs to Dometius the Persian — a convert from the Zoroastrian religion of Persia who fled to the Roman Empire, became a monk (in some accounts a deacon) and a great ascetic in the region of Nisibis and Cyrrhus, and was stoned to death with two of his disciples in a cave by soldiers of the emperor Julian the Apostate, about the year 363, for the crowds that his sanctity drew. The Slavic synaxaria, giving the March 8 Dometius as a Persian of the fourth century who died about 363, identify the two; the Greek keeps a bare venerable Dometius on this day without a Persian notice. This entry follows the day as the calendars keep it, marking the identity as an open question to be settled when the August 7 commemoration is authored: if the two prove one, the entries are to be merged; if distinct, each stands on its own day.
Feast and commemoration
Dometius is kept on March 8 (church date; New Calendar civil March 8; Old Calendar civil March 21). The date commonly falls within Great Lent, on whose weekdays no fixed Epistle and Gospel are appointed; his memory is joined on this day to those of Theophylact of Nicomedia and the other saints of March 8.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O Father, was the divine image kept secure; for taking up the Cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, which passeth away, and to care rather for the soul, a thing immortal; wherefore thy spirit, O venerable Dometius, rejoiceth with the Angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Dometius is depicted as a monk in the monastic schema, bearded and holding a cross or a scroll, in the settled type of a venerable ascetic; where he is figured with his death (under the Persian identification) the scene is the stoning in the cave. No securely identified public-domain image has been found; an icon is wanting.
Disputed questions
- Dometius of March 8 and Dometius the Persian. The Orthodox Church in America notes that the venerable Dometius of March 8 is "possibly identified with Saint Dometius the Persian," whose principal feast is August 7; the Slavic reckoning for March 21 (Old Calendar) reads the day's Dometius outright as a monk-martyr of Persia of the fourth century. The Greek Menaion, by contrast, gives only a venerable Dometius, without the Persian details. The matter is left open here (see above). The August 7 entry — Dometius of Persia — has since been written, and leaves the question open on the same terms: the Persian is a venerable-martyr killed under Julian in 363, the March saint a hosios with no passion attached, and the tradition has never decided whether they are one man or two.