Doulas of Cilicia
The Holy Martyr Doulas of Cilicia
Martyr · d. between 305 and 313, at Praetoriada in Cilicia
Commemorated 15 June — Martyrdom by dragging behind the governor's chariot
Doulas was a Christian of Praetoriada in Cilicia who suffered in the persecution under Maximian, between about 305 and 313. Arrested and brought before the provincial governor Maximus, he prayed before the hearing began that words might be given him to expose the emptiness of the idols, and then argued the case against the gods of the pagans so effectively — turning their own mythology, with its adulteries and murders, against them — that the governor, unable to answer him, fell into a rage and had him tortured through several interrogations. At the last he was beaten until his lower jaw and his knees were broken, then tied to the governor's chariot and dragged until he died, signing himself with the Cross as he went. His body, thrown into the river, was carried down to his own city, where it was found and guarded by shepherds' dogs until Christians could bury it.
Praetoriada, and the trial before Maximus
Nothing is transmitted of Doulas's origin or trade beyond that he was a Christian of pious life belonging to the city of Praetoriada in Cilicia, the coastal province of south-eastern Asia Minor that faced Antioch across the Amanus. His arrest belongs to the last great persecution: the synaxarion places it under Maximian and the notices give the years 305–313, the period of the eastern Caesars' continued pressure on the Christians after Diocletian's abdication. He was sent for trial to Maximus, the governor of the district.
The single distinguishing feature of his passion is that it is an argument. The account relates that before the hearing opened he prayed for words — that the Lord would grant him speech with which to denounce the worship of idols — and that when the interrogation began he confessed Christ and then went over to the attack, arraigning the false religion of the pagans by naming the vices of its gods: the shameful lusts, deceits and cruelties which the poets themselves reported of them and which the state nevertheless required men to honour. It is the standard apologetic argument of the second and third centuries — Athenagoras, Clement, the Octavius of Minucius Felix all use it — and the passion presents Doulas as making it well enough that the governor could not meet it. What the governor did instead was to order torture, and to send the martyr back to prison between hearings; and the account is careful to say that at each new appearance Doulas was found stronger in body and in spirit than before, and ready for whatever came next.
Martyrdom and burial
At the final interrogation the sentence was carried out in the form the passion describes with unusual precision. They broke his lower jaw, so that he could not speak; they broke his knees, so that he could not stand; and then they bound him to the governor's chariot and drove it, dragging him behind, until he died. He made the sign of the Cross upon himself as he was dragged, and so gave up his soul.
The body was untied from the chariot and thrown into the river. The current carried it downstream and cast it up near his native city — the passion means this as a providence rather than an accident. It was found by shepherds' dogs: one of them sat down beside the corpse and kept the birds from it, while another fetched a shepherd's cloak in its teeth and laid it over the body. The shepherds, following the dogs, saw what had happened and led the Christians of the place to the spot, and the relics were buried with honour.
Feast and commemoration
June 15 (church date; New Calendar civil June 15, Old Calendar civil June 28) — a synaxarion commemoration on the day of the Prophet Amos, which carries the service. The Greek Menaion for the day names, after the prophet, "the holy martyr Doulas," and the Slavic books have мч. Ду́лы Килики́йского; the commemoration is universal in the Byzantine rite, but has no proper office anywhere.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Doulas, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Doulas is painted, where he is painted at all, as a lay martyr of middle years: short dark beard, tunic and mantle, the cross held in the right hand and the right palm open toward the viewer. The instruments of his passion give him no distinctive attribute of the kind that identifies Antipas by his bull or Catherine by her wheel, and menologion cycles that illustrate him show the chariot with the martyr bound behind it. The episode of the shepherds' dogs — one guarding the body from the birds, the other bringing a cloak to cover it — would be the natural subject for a narrative panel, and is described in the synaxarion in the visual detail that Byzantine painters usually took up; but no pre-1900 image of this martyr, alone or in a scene, has been identified for this collection. A the list of icons still being sought entry is recorded.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Doulas the Passion-bearer, the Egyptian monk falsely accused of stealing the church vessels, who is commemorated on the same day, June 15. The Greek and Slavic books list the two consecutively, and the coincidence of name and date is the likeliest source of confusion in this whole day: one is a lay martyr of Cilicia under the last persecution, the other an ascetic of Egypt of uncertain date who died at prayer in his monastery after twenty years of unjust exile. Neither is Doulas the disciple of Bessarion the Great (June 6) through whom that father's sayings and wonders were transmitted — a third person again, and one whose own commemoration the Byzantine books do not keep separately.
- The place. Praetoriada (Πραιτωριάς) is not securely identified on the map of Cilicia, and the name may be a corruption; some notices place the martyrdom simply "in Cilicia" or "in Zephyrium." The Greek verse for the day turns on his name — Doulas, "slave" — and the service he rendered his true Master.
- The date. The synaxaria give Maximian and the years 305–313; the reference is to Galerius Maximianus or Maximinus Daia rather than to the Maximian who abdicated with Diocletian in 305, and the notices do not distinguish them. The century assigned here is the fourth, on the strength of the 305–313 bracket.