Galacteon, Juliana and Saturninus
The Holy Martyrs Galacteon, Juliana and her son Saturninus, of Constantinople
Martyr
Commemorated 22 June — Martyrdom at Constantinople, by drowning and by fire
Three martyrs of Constantinople whom the synaxaria join on June 22 and of whom they transmit almost nothing but the manner of their deaths: Galacteon was drowned in the sea, and Juliana was burned alive together with her son Saturninus, for no cause but that they were Christians. No reign, no magistrate, no year and no connection between the two executions is given. They are among the many companies of the fixed calendar preserved by a single line, and are recorded here at the length the record actually supports.
What is transmitted
The notice is of the shortest kind found in the synaxaria: a name, a place, a manner of death. Galacteon was cast into the sea and drowned. Juliana, with her son Saturninus, was given to the fire. The place is Constantinople; the cause, in the standard formula, is that they confessed themselves Christians.
Nothing else survives — not the emperor, not the prefect, not the year, not whether Galacteon was kin to the mother and son or was simply commemorated with them because the two executions fell on the same day. The Slavonic books commonly reduce the group to two, "the martyrs Galaction and Juliana," dropping Saturninus; the Greek notices and the calendars that follow them keep all three. The corpus of names by itself gives no century: Galacteon and Saturninus are names at home in the third and fourth centuries as easily as in the sixth, and the century field is therefore omitted here rather than guessed.
Feast and commemoration
June 22 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 5), among the commemorations that follow the hieromartyr Eusebius of Samosata, who carries the day's service. The group has no proper office and is commemorated at the sixth ode with the day's other martyrs.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of martyrs)
Thy martyrs Galacteon, Juliana and Saturninus, 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.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Where the group is painted at all it is in the menologion rows for June: a man, a woman and a child, each with the cross, the woman's head covered in the maphorion and the boy at her side; the narrative form divides the panel between the two deaths, Galacteon thrown from a boat into the water on one side and Juliana and Saturninus standing in the flames on the other. No pre-1900 image of them has been located for this collection, and given the brevity of the notice none is likely to exist outside a complete menologion cycle.
Disputed questions
- Two or three? The Slavonic and Russian books for the day list Galaction and Juliana; the Greek tradition and the calendars dependent on it add Saturninus, Juliana's son, burned with her. Nothing turns on the difference except the count, and both usages are recorded here.
- Date and reign. Entirely unattested. Modern lists sometimes attach the group to the Diocletianic persecution by inference from the manner of death; there is no warrant for it in the notice, and no date is asserted in this entry.
- Not to be confused with the far better known married pair Galacteon and Episteme of Emesa (November 5), husband and wife, martyred in Phoenicia; the shared name has repeatedly caused the two commemorations to be run together in secondary lists. Nor is this Juliana Juliana of Nicomedia (December 21). The Saturninus of this group is a child of Constantinople and is unrelated to the several African and Roman martyrs of that name.