Frontasius, Severinus, Severian and Silanus
The Holy Martyrs Frontasius, Severinus, Severian and Silanus, who suffered in Gaul
Martyr · d. 1st century (traditionally under Claudius, 41–54)
Commemorated 4 June — Beheading at Petragorium (Périgueux) in Gaul
Four martyrs of Gaul, honoured as a company: Frontasius, Severinus, Severian and Silanus, sent to preach the word of God in the south of Gaul by Frontonus (Fronto), the bishop of Petragorium — Périgueux in the Périgord. The pagan governor, whom the passion names Squiridonus, arrested them and demanded that they renounce Christ; they answered that they had one desire only, to live or to die for Christ. He had them taken outside the city, bound to pillars, and nails driven into their heads in the form of a crown of thorns, and then beheaded. The tradition adds a cephalophore miracle: that they rose, took up their own heads, carried them to the church of the Mother of God where Bishop Frontonus was at prayer, laid them at his feet, made the sign of the cross and died. They are commemorated on June 4.
The mission of Bishop Frontonus
The four belong to the foundation legend of the church of Petragorium, the city of the Petrocorii in Aquitaine, now Périgueux. Its first bishop, Fronto — Frontonus in the Greek and Slavonic transmission, Saint Front in French — is presented in that legend as an apostolic missionary of Gaul, and the four are his disciples, sent out by him to preach in the surrounding country of southern Gaul.
The passion sets the persecution under the emperor Claudius (41–54), which would make them among the earliest martyrs of the West. The governor is named Squiridonus — a name with no independent attestation.
Arrest and confession
Arrested, they were required to abjure Christ. The passion gives their answer in a single sentence which is its best line and which the Byzantine synaxaria have kept: that they had but one desire — to live for Christ or to die for him. Nothing they were offered or threatened with moved them from it, and the governor, enraged, gave the order for their death.
The crown of nails, and the beheading
They were led outside the city, bound to pillars, and nails were driven into their heads — the passion is explicit that the nails were set in a circle, in the likeness of the crown of thorns, so that the manner of their death was made a deliberate imitation of the Passion of Christ. After this they were beheaded.
The cephalophory
The tradition then relates what the Latin hagiography of Gaul relates of a whole family of its martyrs: that by the power of God the four continued to live; that they took up their own heads, walked with them into the city to the church of the Mother of God where the bishop Frontonus who had sent them out was at prayer; that they laid their heads at his feet, signed themselves with the cross, and then died.
The motif — the cephalophore, the head-carrying martyr — is the signature of the Gallic passions (Denis of Paris is the most famous instance) and is read in the tradition not as a physiological claim but as a statement about the martyr's death: that the witness is not silenced by decapitation, and that the martyr's crown is returned to the church that sent him. That it concludes with the sign of the cross and the giving up of the spirit, in the bishop's presence and in the church of the Theotokos, makes the point ecclesially: the mission returns to the one who sent it.
Feast and commemoration
June 4 (church date; New Calendar civil June 4, Old Calendar civil June 17), kept with Saint Metrophanes of Constantinople. They are one of the small number of martyrs of Gaul that the Byzantine synaxaria preserve, having entered the Greek books from Latin sources, and from the Greek they pass into the Slavonic and so into the Russian and American calendars. At Périgueux their memory is bound to that of Saint Front, whose cathedral city it is. They are commemorated as a company, with the common of several martyrs; no proper Byzantine service exists.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from thee our God; for having thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions, O Christ our God, save our souls.
Iconography
The four are painted as a company: young or middle-aged men, beardless or lightly bearded, in tunic and mantle, standing in a row and each holding the cross of the martyrs. Their proper attribute is the crown of nails — the ring of nail-heads about the brow, which distinguishes them from every other group of martyrs in the calendar and makes the visual argument of their passion, that their death was conformed to the crowning of Christ. Where the martyrdom is narrated they are shown bound to four pillars while executioners drive in the nails; and the Gallic version of the scene shows them walking with their heads in their hands toward the church, or kneeling to lay them at the feet of a vested bishop, who is Frontonus.
No pre-1900 icon of them has been located for this collection. Byzantine art has little use for the Latin martyrs of Gaul, and the illustrated Russian Lives of the Saints give plates for only three of the June 4 commemorations — Metrophanes, Concordius and Zosimas — not for this company; the Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort, covers only September to February.
Disputed questions
- The date is the central problem. The passion's Claudian setting (41–54) cannot be reconciled with the history of the see. Fronto of Périgueux is placed by critical study of the Gallic episcopal lists in the third or fourth century, not the first; the apostolic dating of the Aquitanian sees is a medieval elaboration, of the same kind and the same period as the legends that made Martial of Limoges and Denis of Paris disciples of the Apostles. If the four are Fronto's disciples, they belong with him to the third or fourth century and to one of the great persecutions. The Byzantine calendars transmit the Claudian dating, which is therefore recorded here as the tradition's; the historical placing is later, and this repository indexes them under the first century only because that is what the calendars say, while stating the difficulty plainly.
- The names, and one confusion. Severinus and Severianus standing side by side in a four-name list is the kind of doublet that arises in transmission, and some lists give only three martyrs; the Greek synaxaria and the Russian Lives give four. Neither Severian nor Severinus here is to be confused with Severian of Sebaste, the martyr of Armenia commemorated on September 9, nor Silanus with the Silvanus or Silas of other days.
- The cephalophory. The head-carrying is not in every version; the plainer notices end with the beheading. It is recorded here as belonging to the tradition, with its meaning rather than its mechanics.
- The governor. "Squiridonus" is unknown to Roman provincial prosopography; the name may be a corruption.