Forty Martyrs of Rome
The Holy Forty Martyrs who suffered at Rome
Martyr
Commemorated 16 June — Perfected by fire at Rome
A company of forty martyrs of the city of Rome, unnamed in the tradition, who were burned alive and are commemorated on June 16. The Greek synaxarion gives them a single line — that they were perfected by fire — and a riddling couplet which counts their number out in fives, twenty and twenty, rather than naming it: a memorial in arithmetic for a company whose names were lost. They are among the anonymous Roman companies which the Byzantine calendar received from the martyrologies of the West and kept without further detail.
Of these forty nothing is transmitted but their number, their city and the manner of their death: they suffered at Rome, and they suffered by fire. No name, no emperor, no prefect, no year.
The couplet appointed for them in the metrical synaxarion is one of the curiosities of that collection. Instead of stating the number it builds it: five-and-five, five-and-five — that is, twenty — and five-and-five-and-five, and five — that is, twenty again; the fire burns forty noble witnesses. The commemoration was probably attached to a Roman coemeterium where forty bodies were venerated together, and reached Constantinople through the exchange of martyrologies between the two capitals in the fifth and sixth centuries.
Rome supplied the Byzantine calendar with several such numbered and nameless companies — among them the martyrs burned with Sisinius and Cyriacus and the great multitudes of the catacomb inscriptions. Where the Eastern books preserve a Roman company with no names at all, it is usually a sign that the notice travelled as a liturgical fact — a grave, a day, a number — rather than as a passion.
Feast and commemoration
June 16 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 29). Greek usage: synaxarion notice within the service of St Tychon of Amathus. They do not appear in the Russian or Antiochian enumerations of the day.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from thee our God; for possessing thy strength they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions save our souls.
Iconography
The type for an anonymous company perfected by fire is a crowd of witnesses standing within the flames, hands raised in prayer, the figures ranked in depth so that the multitude is suggested rather than counted, with the furnace or pyre indicated by red-orange tongues rising around them; a menologion illustrator would render the whole company in a single burning enclosure. No individuating attributes are possible, since no names are transmitted. No pre-1900 image of this company has been located for this collection; the Menologion of Basil II, which supplies many such group miniatures, covers only September to February and so has nothing for June 16.
Disputed questions
- Not the Forty of Sebaste. The company most likely to be confused with these is the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (March 9), the soldiers of the frozen lake in Armenia — one of the most famous commemorations of the whole year, with names, a passion, a testament and a full festal service. These forty are Roman, anonymous, and perfected by fire; the two companies share nothing but a number.
- Not the forty-four of the Lavra, nor the forty-two of Amorion. Distinguish also the Forty-four Martyrs of the Lavra of St Sabbas and the Forty-two Martyrs of Amorion (March 6), and the Forty Virgin-Martyrs and Ammoun the Deacon (September 1), each of which is a distinct company.
- Relation to the Roman martyrs of the same day in the Western books. The Latin martyrologies for June 16 carry several Roman entries of their own; no identification of this Greek company with any of them is proposed here, as the numbers and manners of death do not agree.