Herakleides and Myron of Tamassos
The Holy Hieromartyrs Herakleides and Myron, Bishops of Tamassos in Cyprus
Hieromartyr · Bishop
Commemorated 17 September
Herakleides and Myron were bishops of Tamassos in Cyprus in the apostolic age. Herakleides, a Cypriot who guided the apostles Barnabas and Mark through the island, was baptised by them and consecrated first bishop of Tamassos by Barnabas; Myron was his successor in the see. Both ended their episcopates in martyrdom — the synaxarion verses say they were given to the pyre, "offered to Christ like the fragrance of myrrh." Their joint memory is kept on September 17, above all at the monastery of Saint Herakleidios near ancient Tamassos, where the first bishop's relics rest.
Origins and ministry
The tradition of the Cypriot church, whose literary anchor is the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas (5th century) together with the island's synaxaria, relates that Herakleides was a young Cypriot of the district of Tamassos — the later accounts make him the son of a pagan priest — who served as guide to Barnabas and Mark as they crossed the Troodos country preaching Christ (the journeys of Acts 13 and after). Won by their preaching, he was baptised in the river near his home, instructed, and consecrated by Barnabas as the first bishop of Tamassos, the inland city whose copper had made it famous from Homeric times. He is said to have made his church in a cave, to have preached, healed and raised the dead among the still-pagan islanders, and to have shepherded his flock into old age — the Cypriot Life gives him sixty years at his death.
Of Myron the record is thinner still: the synaxaria commemorate him with Herakleides as bishop of the same see and a martyr by the same death, and the Cypriot tradition counts him among Herakleides' earliest successors at Tamassos. Nothing further of his episcopate is transmitted.
Martyrdom
Both bishops died as martyrs at pagan hands. The verses of the Greek synaxarion for September 17 place them together on the pyre, turning the younger bishop's name into the epigram: "Herakleides and Myron, set upon the fire, were offered to Christ like the fragrance of myrrh (myron)." The Cypriot Lives speak also of Herakleides being set upon and beaten by a pagan mob before his death. No year is transmitted; the whole tradition belongs to the first century, within living memory of the apostles of Cyprus.
Relics and veneration
The monastery of Saint Herakleidios stands at Politiko, beside the ruins of ancient Tamassos, over the cave-church and tomb the tradition assigns to the saint; rebuilt in its present form in 1773 under Archbishop Chrysanthos and revived as a women's monastery in 1963, it keeps the saint's skull and hand in a silver reliquary and celebrates the joint feast on September 17. The cult of Herakleides is among the oldest of the autocephalous Church of Cyprus, which counts him with Barnabas, Lazarus of Kition and Spyridon among its founding hierarchs.
Feast and commemoration
September 17 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 30), within the afterfeast of the Elevation of the Cross. The commemoration stands in the Greek Menaion's synaxarion for the day (verified live at glt.goarch.org) and in Greek and Cypriot calendars; the OCA's daily listing for September 17 (consulted live) does not carry it — a jurisdictional difference recorded here. In Cyprus the day is kept as a local feast at the Politiko monastery.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a hieromartyr)
Sharer of the ways of the Apostles and successor of their thrones, thou didst find thy practice, O inspired of God, a ladder to the vision of God; wherefore, rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst contend for the faith even unto blood. O hieromartyr Herakleides, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No pre-modern icon of the pair has been identified on free-licence sources; the surviving images at Politiko and in Cypriot churches are modern works and are not stored. The two are painted as early bishops in phelonion and omophorion, Herakleides usually white-bearded with the Gospel book, sometimes with the cave-church or a pyre beneath; Myron is shown alike, distinguished by inscription.
Disputed questions
- The succession at Tamassos. The Cypriot tradition also venerates Mnason (October 19) as Herakleides' disciple and immediate successor; how Myron stands in the sequence — second, third, or later bishop — the sources do not settle, and the September 17 pairing rests on the common feast rather than on a documented succession list.
- Sources. The Acts of Barnabas, the fullest narrative witness, is a fifth-century composition of limited historical value; the securely ancient datum is the cult itself — the see, the tomb at Tamassos, and the synaxarion commemoration.
- Not to be confused. This Myron, deacon and bishop of Tamassos in Cyprus, is a different person from Myron of Crete, "the Wonderworker," bishop of Crete (August 8, †c. 350), and from the hieromartyr Myron the Presbyter of Achaia (August 17).