Eleutherius the Cubicularius
The Holy Martyr Eleutherius the Cubicularius, of Byzantium
Martyr · d. c. 305–311
Commemorated 4 August — Beheading under Maximian, 15 December — Named in the Slavonic Menaion with the hieromartyr Eleutherius of Illyricum
Eleutherius was a cubicularius — a chamberlain of the imperial bedchamber — at the court of Byzantium in the last age of the persecutions, a man of wealth and high place who was baptised and thereafter lived, in the emperor's own household, the life of a Christian ascetic: psalmody, almsgiving, and a church built at his own expense on his country estate. Denounced to the emperor by one of his own servants, he refused every inducement to sacrifice and was beheaded, about the years 305–311. His body, cast out to the dogs and the birds, was left untouched and was recovered and buried by a priest. He is commemorated on August 4, and again in the Slavonic books on December 15 among the company of the hieromartyr Eleutherius of Illyricum, with whom he is easily and often confused.
A Christian in the imperial bedchamber
The record of Eleutherius is a synaxarion notice, and the notice is short; what it transmits it transmits consistently. He was a κουβικουλάριος, one of the eunuchs or chamberlains of the imperial cubiculum — an office of the innermost household, close to the emperor's person and, at that period, one of the most powerful posts a man without senatorial rank could hold. The Greek and Slavonic notices agree that he was noble, rich, and honoured at court, and that he came to think all of it perishable. He received holy baptism, and thereafter, without leaving his post, took up a rule of life that the notices describe in the same terms they would use of a monk: he sang the psalms by day and night, gave freely to the poor, and withdrew as often as he could to a country estate of his own outside the city, where he built a church and worshipped in it.
The synaxaria set this under Maximian — Maximian Herculius (284–305) in the Slavonic reading followed by the Orthodox Church in America, with the years of death given elsewhere as 305–311, that is, in the persecution of Galerius and Maximinus Daia that followed Diocletian's abdication. The place is Byzantium, before it was Constantinople; Greek usage accordingly styles him of Byzantium, and the later Slavonic books of Constantinople, which is the same claim in a later idiom.
Denunciation and martyrdom
He was betrayed from within his own house. One of his servants — the notices are unanimous that the informer belonged to his own household, and ascribe the act to the prompting of the devil — reported to the emperor that the chamberlain was a Christian and kept a church on his estate. Summoned, Eleutherius was neither tortured at length nor argued with at length: the emperor, who valued him, tried first persuasion and the restoration of favour, and required only that he sacrifice. He refused, confessing Christ, and was beheaded.
The order was given that his body should be thrown out unburied, to the dogs and the birds — a sentence that in the passions of this period is meant to deny the martyr the honour of a tomb and the Christians the honour of a relic. The notice relates that the beasts and the birds would not touch it, and that a priest came by night, took up the body, and buried it with reverence.
Relics and later veneration
His relics were kept at Constantinople, and the tradition reported by the Orthodox Church in America has them afterwards carried into Italy, to the city of Theato — Teate, the modern Chieti in the Abruzzi, an old see with a considerable stock of translated Eastern relics. The transfer is not dated in the notices, and no Greek source consulted for this entry carries it; it is recorded here as it is transmitted, without further claim.
He is a saint of the synaxarion rather than of the office: no proper canon, troparion or kontakion is appointed for him, and on August 4 the sung service is that of the Seven Youths of Ephesus, Eleutherius being read in the synaxarion beneath them.
Feast and commemoration
August 4 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 17) is his own day, kept in Greek, Slavonic and Antiochian usage alike, beneath the Seven Youths of Ephesus. The day falls within the Dormition Fast (August 1–14). A second notice is carried in the Slavonic Menaion and the Russian calendars on December 15, where he is named after the hieromartyr Eleutherius of Illyricum; that placement is recorded here as a secondary feast rather than as an alternative day, since the August notice is the proper one and the December one is a companion listing occasioned by the shared name.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Eleutherius, 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
No pre-1900 image of Eleutherius the Cubicularius has been identified for this collection, and the Wikimedia Commons search returns nothing for him under any of his names; what the search does return under Elevferiy belongs to a twentieth-century Russian hierarch and is irrelevant. He is not to be given the images of the December 15 hieromartyr, which show a bishop in phelonion and omophorion and belong to the other saint. Where he is painted, the type is that of the courtier-martyr: a beardless or lightly bearded man in the long tunic and jewelled chlamys of the palace service, holding the martyr's cross, sometimes with the small church he built shown at his side; because he is a saint of the synaxarion without an office, he appears chiefly in menologion cycles rather than in panel icons.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Eleutherius of Illyricum, the hieromartyr and bishop († c. 120), whose principal feast is December 15 and who suffered with his mother Anthia under Hadrian. The confusion is structural rather than accidental: the Slavonic Menaion carries both Eleutherii on December 15, the bishop as the day's principal commemoration and the chamberlain as a secondary notice, so that English calendars deriving from the Slavonic books sometimes print a single conflated entry. They are certainly distinct — a second-century bishop of Illyricum martyred at Rome, and a fourth-century layman of the imperial household martyred at Byzantium — and this entry keeps August 4 as the chamberlain's own day.
- The date of death. "Maximian Herculius (284–305)" and "305–311" are both transmitted and are not quite compatible; the second is the reading of the Russian calendars and is the likelier, since the systematic pursuit of Christians in the household of the palace belongs to the years after 303. The entry gives the range rather than choosing.
- Whether he was a eunuch. The office of cubicularius was in this period normally, though not invariably, held by eunuchs, and some modern accounts describe him as one. The synaxarion notices call him only koubikoularios and do not say.