Heliodorus of Magydos
The Holy Martyr Heliodorus of Magydos
Martyr · d. c. 273
Commemorated 19 November
Heliodorus was a martyr of Magydos (Magydum) in Pamphylia, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, who suffered for Christ in the reign of the emperor Aurelian (270–275). Brought before Aetius, the governor of the city, and refusing to renounce his faith, he was subjected to prolonged tortures — which the fuller synaxarion accounts describe him as enduring unharmed — and was finally beheaded. He is commemorated on November 19, within the Nativity Fast.
The notice of Heliodorus is brief. He lived in Magydos, a city of Pamphylia, during the reign of Aurelian, and was arrested and tried before the city's ruler, Aetius, for confessing Christ. When he would not deny the faith, he was put to fierce torture and at last beheaded.
The expanded synaxarion tradition surrounds this bare outline with a passion of miraculous deliverances of the kind common in the Byzantine martyr-legends: Heliodorus is said to have been racked and torn, hung up and burned, and cast into boiling substances, yet preserved unhurt through the prayer he offered, so that some of his tormentors — in one telling, the executioner himself — were converted by what they saw, before the martyr was beheaded and gave up his soul. The historical core is what the OCA transmits: a martyr of Magydos under Aurelian, condemned by the governor Aetius and put to death by the sword. The elaborations are recorded as belonging to the synaxarion's fuller legend rather than asserted as established fact.
Feast and commemoration
November 19 on the church calendar (Old Calendar civil December 2), within the Nativity Fast. Heliodorus is kept in the synaxaria and by the Slavic and American calendars on this day, alongside the Prophet Obadiah and the martyr Barlaam of Antioch; the received Greek Menaion of November 19 gives its proper service to the prophet and to Barlaam, and Heliodorus is commemorated without a proper office of his own — the common of a martyr serving where his memory is kept liturgically.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (general troparion of a martyr)
Thy martyr Heliodorus, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God; for possessing thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No pre-modern icon of Heliodorus has been identified. He would be depicted as a martyr, a young or middle-aged man bearing the martyr's cross, in the manner of the martyrs of the third-century persecutions.