Evangelos of Tomis

The Holy Hieromartyr Evangelos, Bishop of Tomis in Scythia Minor

Hieromartyr · Bishop · d. c. 300

Commemorated 7 July — Martyrdom at Tomis in the Diocletianic persecution

Evangelos — in the Latin and Romanian sources Evangelicus — is the first bishop of Tomis whose name is preserved: the see on the western shore of the Black Sea, at the Greek colony that is now Constanța in Romania, in the Roman province of Scythia Minor at the mouths of the Danube. The tradition makes him an heir of the mission of the Apostle Andrew, who is held to have preached in those lands; he baptised many of the pagan population, planted churches through the province, and — a detail that fixes him in the local record — baptised the parents of the martyrs Epictetus and Astion of Halmyris (July 8), Alexander and Marcellina, after their son's death at Halmyris. He is said to have suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian, and is commemorated on July 7.

The see at the mouths of the Danube

Tomis was an old Milesian colony on the Pontic shore, by the Roman period the chief city of the district that would be organised as the province of Scythia Minor — the Dobrudja, the wedge of land between the lower Danube and the Black Sea. It was a frontier of everything: Greek city, Roman garrison, Getic and Sarmatian hinterland, and the last Roman ground before the barbarian north. Ovid had been exiled there and complained of it bitterly. It became, in the Christian centuries, one of the most productive martyr-grounds of the Empire, and the archaeology of the Dobrudja has turned up basilicas and martyrs' crypts in numbers out of all proportion to the size of the province.

The Church of that region traced its origin to the preaching of the Apostle Andrew, whose mission among the Scythians is recorded by Eusebius from Origen; and the local tradition, both Greek and Romanian, presents Evangelos as standing in that succession — "a follower of the Apostle Andrew," meaning not a personal disciple, which the chronology forbids, but an heir and continuator of the Andrean mission. He is the first bishop of Tomis known by name, at the head of a list that later includes such figures as Bretanion, who withstood the Arian emperor Valens, and Theotimus, whom the Huns called "the god of the Romans."

His ministry

The notices credit Evangelos with a wide and effective evangelisation: he turned many pagans to Christ and built churches through the province, giving the scattered Christian communities of the Danube mouths an organised, episcopal shape for the first time. The one concrete incident preserved of him belongs to the aftermath of the most famous martyrdom of his province. When the presbyter Epictetus and the young monk Astion were beheaded at Halmyris in the persecution — the traditional year is 290 — Astion's pagan parents, Alexander and Marcellina, came from Asia Minor in search of their son, learned what had become of him, and asked for baptism. It was Evangelos, bishop of Tomis, who baptised them. The detail comes from the passion of Epictetus and Astion, which is why it survives at all, and it is the firmest anchor there is for placing Evangelos in time.

Martyrdom

The tradition holds that Evangelos himself was martyred, in the great persecution of Diocletian, which fell with particular violence on Scythia Minor — the province gave the Church, among many others, the martyrs of Halmyris, of Noviodunum, and of Axiopolis. The circumstances of his death are not transmitted: no acta survive, and the synaxarial notice records the fact of his martyrdom without the manner. He is styled hieromartyr accordingly.

Feast and commemoration

July 7 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 20), the day before his spiritual children Epictetus and Astion of Halmyris (July 8), and together with Thomas of Mount Maleon, Kyriaki of Nicomedia and Peregrinus and his companions. He is kept with particular honour by the Romanian Orthodox Church, in whose calendar he stands among the saints of Dobrudja and the first-named hierarch of the Archdiocese of Tomis, the historic see revived in modern Constanța.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hieromartyr)

As a sharer in the ways and a successor to the thrones of the Apostles, O divinely inspired one, thou didst find in contemplation the means to ascend to divine heights; rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst struggle for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Evangelos: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Iconography

Evangelos is painted in the hierarchical vesture — phelonion, crossed omophorion — blessing with the right hand and holding the Gospel-book in the left, in the standard type of the bishop; as a hieromartyr he may also hold the small cross. He is usually shown as a middle-aged or elderly man with a dark or greying beard of moderate length. In modern Romanian churches of the Dobrudja he appears in the ranks of the saints of Scythia Minor, commonly grouped with Epictetus and Astion, Bretanion and Theotimus of Tomis, and the martyrs of Niculițel — often against a background of the sea and the Danube mouths, or with a model of a basilica in his hand as the founder of churches in the province.

No pre-1900 icon of him has been located for this collection. His cult is essentially local and his surviving images are of the twentieth-century Romanian revival, and so are the copyrighted work of living or recently living iconographers; none may be stored here. His July feast also excludes the Menologion of Basil II, which covers only September to February.

Disputed questions

Date. The notices place him "at the end of the third century" and simultaneously ascribe his death to the persecution of Diocletian (284–305), whose general edicts fall in 303–305. The baptism of Alexander and Marcellina, which followed the martyrdom of their son in about 290, requires him to have been bishop by then. This entry therefore dates his repose to c. 300 and indexes him in the fourth century, while recording that the sources as they stand support anything from the 290s to about 304.
"Disciple of the Apostle Andrew." The phrase is standard in the notices and cannot be taken literally across two centuries; it is the ordinary hagiographic way of asserting the apostolic origin of the see, not a claim of personal acquaintance.
The name. Greek sources give Εὐάγγελος (Evangelos); the Latin and Romanian tradition, following the passion of Epictetus and Astion, gives Evangelicus, and English calendars derived from the Slavonic print "Evangelicus" or "Evangelus." These are one man.
Historicity. Some scholars of the Dobrudjan Church treat Evangelicus as a figure known only from the Passio of Epictetus and Astion and doubt the martyrdom ascribed to him, while accepting that a bishop of that name stood at Tomis in the period. The archaeological confirmation of the Halmyris martyrs in 2001–2004 has given the Passio as a whole considerably more credit than it once had.