Eikon

Epictetus and Astion

The Holy Venerable Martyrs Epictetus the Priest and Astion the Monk, of Halmyris

Venerable Martyr · Priest · d. 290

Commemorated 8 July — Beheading at Halmyris in Scythia Minor, 290

Epictetus, a priest and monk, and Astion, the young nobleman he converted, are the protomartyrs of the land that is now Romania: two ascetics from Bithynia who crossed the Black Sea to the Roman frontier fortress of Halmyris on the Danube delta in Scythia Minor, lived there some seventeen years in prayer, healing and preaching, and were beheaded together on July 8, 290, under the persecution conducted by the commander Latronianus. Their Latin passion is one of the oldest hagiographic documents of the lower Danube, and their story has an unusual epilogue: Astion's pagan parents, coming from Bithynia to look for their son, were converted by the account of his death and baptised by the bishop of Tomis. In 2001 archaeologists excavating the basilica of Halmyris found beneath its altar a crypt containing the bones of two men, both decapitated — an identification the Romanian Church accepted, and the relics are now enshrined at Murighiol.

Two monks of Bithynia

The Latin Passio makes Epictetus a man consecrated to God from boyhood: schooled in the Scriptures, taken into the monastic life while still young, and afterwards ordained priest. He was already known for the conversions he made and for the healing of the sick and the possessed when he met Astion, a young man of a noble and wealthy pagan family — his father Alexander a magistrate, his mother Marcellina. The passion records the substance of their first conversation: Epictetus spoke to him of the one true God, of the worth of the immortal soul, and of the passing away of everything the world offers. Astion believed, was baptised, and against the whole expectation of his family left it to become a monk under Epictetus's direction.

The voyage to Scythia and the years at Halmyris

Persecution in Bithynia — and, the passion suggests, the pressure of Astion's family — drove them out. They took ship across the Euxine to the province of Scythia Minor, the Roman Dobrudja between the lower Danube and the sea, and settled beside the fortress and river-port of Halmyris, at the southern edge of the Danube delta. The passion dates their arrival to about 273, and gives their ages: Epictetus forty-seven, Astion eighteen.

There they lived for some seventeen years in a cell outside the walls, in fasting, vigil and manual labour, going into the town to preach. Two of their miracles are told at length. Epictetus healed a boy of fifteen, deaf and dumb from birth, by prayer and by breathing upon him — a wonder that, the passion claims, brought more than a thousand of the townspeople to Christ. Astion, for his part, restored a man whose legs and feet had been crushed under a collapsing wall; and the daughter of one of the leading men of the place was delivered by them from an unclean spirit. The passion also preserves a psychological detail rare in such texts: the young Astion's temptations to despondency and to homesickness for his parents' house, and the older man's counsel to him.

Arrest and martyrdom, 290

In 290 the military commander Latronianus came to Halmyris on circuit. The pagan priests of the place laid a charge before him that the two monks were subverting the town by sorcery. Both were seized. The passion describes a long process: they were questioned, refused to sacrifice, were beaten and racked and burned, and were then held thirty days in prison without food or water, and brought out at the end of it alive. They gave no name but Christianus under interrogation — the passion makes a point of it, that to every question they answered only "I am a Christian" — and Latronianus at last ordered them beheaded. They died by the sword on July 8, 290, Astion then about thirty-five and Epictetus about sixty-four.

The conversion of Alexander and Marcellina

The passion continues past the martyrdom. Alexander and Marcellina, Astion's parents, having heard nothing of their son for years, came at length to Scythia to look for him, and learned at Halmyris that he was dead and how he had died. What they were told of his life and his end converted them; they were instructed and baptised by Evangelicus, bishop of Tomis, the metropolis of the province, and remained in Scythia. The episode is what gives the passion its shape: the son who left his parents for Christ draws them after him by his death.

Relics and rediscovery

The bodies were taken up by the Christians of Halmyris and buried. When the peace of the Church came, a basilica was raised over the place, and the martyrs' remains were laid in a crypt beneath its altar — the ordinary practice of the fourth century, and the sign of a cult already established. The site was lost with the collapse of the Danube frontier and the abandonment of Halmyris, and the modern village of Murighiol in Tulcea county grew up beside the ruins.

In August 2001 the Romanian archaeological team excavating the basilica at Halmyris opened the crypt under the sanctuary and found in it the disarticulated bones of two men, with the cervical vertebrae showing the marks of decapitation, together with the painted Greek inscription naming martyrs and, by the excavators' reading, the two names. The Romanian Orthodox Church accepted the identification and the relics were solemnly translated; they are venerated at the monastery raised at Murighiol on the site, and Epictetus and Astion are honoured in Romania as the first martyrs of that land whose grave is known.

Feast and commemoration

July 8 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 21), on which day the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Russian Church and the Orthodox Church in America commemorate them. They are not on the Greek or the Antiochian calendars. In Romania their memory has grown greatly since the discovery of the relics in 2001: they are counted among the sfinţii români, the saints of the Romanian land, and are kept with the other martyrs of Scythia Minor — the martyrs of Niculiţel and the martyrs of Tomis — as the founding witnesses of Christianity between the Danube and the sea. The day is a patronal feast at Murighiol, where the monastery of Saints Epictetus and Astion stands beside the excavated fortress.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4

Trained from your youth in the discipline of the monks, and shining in the priesthood and in the ascetic life, ye were made worthy of the martyr's crown, O Epictetus and Astion; for having kept the faith unbroken under torments, ye were beheaded for Christ and inherited the land of the living. Wherefore intercede with the merciful God, that He grant our souls great mercy.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

Epictetus and Astion are painted together, as they are commemorated: Epictetus the older, in the phelonion and stole of a priest or in the monastic analavos over the schema, white- or grey-bearded; Astion young, beardless or lightly bearded, in the plain monastic habit and mantle. Both hold the cross of martyrdom in the right hand, and one or both may hold a scroll. The setting, in the Romanian icons painted since the recovery of the relics, is the walled fortress of Halmyris and the Danube, sometimes with the basilica shown between them; scenes of the healing of the deaf-mute boy and of the beheading occur in the modern vita-icons at Murighiol.

No pre-1900 image of these martyrs has been located. Their cult, though ancient at the site, left no surviving medieval iconography; the icons now in use are all of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and are the copyrighted work of living iconographers, and none could be stored under the icon policy of this collection. The Menologion of Basil II, the ordinary first resort for a minor saint of the fixed year, covers only September to February and does not reach July.

Disputed questions

  • The date of the martyrdom. The passion sets the deaths in 290, under Diocletian but a dozen years before the general edicts of 303; some scholars have preferred to place the events in the Great Persecution itself and read 290 as a scribal or traditional figure. The passion's own internal chronology (arrival in 273, seventeen years at Halmyris) is consistent, and 290 is retained here.
  • The historical value of the passion. The Passio Epicteti et Astionis survives in Latin and is by any reckoning early, but it carries the ordinary furniture of the genre — the round numbers of converts, the thirty days without food, the set speeches. Its topography, however, is exact and unusual: a real frontier fort, a real provincial metropolis with a bishop named, and a cult in a real basilica. The 2001 excavation vindicated the topography, which is more than most passions of this class can claim.
  • The identification of the 2001 relics. The find — two decapitated males under the altar of a basilica at the very site the passion names — is as strong an archaeological confirmation as this kind of case admits, and the excavators and the Romanian Church treat it as certain. Strictly, the bones prove that two beheaded men were venerated as martyrs at Halmyris, not that these are the men the passion names; the inscription is the link, and its reading has been questioned in detail though not overturned.

Sources

  1. Passio Sanctorum Epicteti presbyteri et Astionis monachi (the Latin passion; BHL 2568) — the origins of the two, the voyage to Scythia, the ages at arrival, the miracles at Halmyris, the thirty days in prison, the interrogation by Latronianus, the beheading on July 8, 290, and the conversion and baptism of Alexander and Marcellina by Bishop Evangelicus of Tomis.
  2. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, July 8 — Monastic Martyrs Epictetus and Astion, at Halmyris (consulted live: the meeting and conversion of Astion, the arrival in 273 at ages forty-seven and eighteen, the healing of the deaf-mute boy and of the man crushed by the collapsing wall, Latronianus in 290, the thirty days' imprisonment, the beheading, and the discovery of the bones in 2001).
  3. The Romanian archaeological reports on the basilica of Halmyris (Murighiol, Tulcea county) and the crypt opened beneath its altar in August 2001 — two decapitated male skeletons and the painted inscription; the reception of the find by the Romanian Orthodox Church and the enshrining of the relics.
  4. Romanian synaxaria and calendars for July 8, and the general literature on the martyrs of Scythia Minor (Halmyris, Niculiţel, Tomis).