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Hermes of the Seventy

The Holy Apostle Hermes of the Seventy, Bishop of Dalmatia

Apostle · Apostle of the Seventy · Bishop · d. 1st century

Commemorated 4 January — Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles, 8 March — Commemoration of the apostle, 8 April — Commemorated among the apostles of the Seventy of April 8 (with Herodion and companions)

Hermes was one of the Seventy Apostles whom the Lord sent out before his face (Luke 10:1), named by the Apostle Paul in the closing greetings of the Epistle to the Romans — "Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brethren which are with them" (Romans 16:14). The tradition remembers him as a bishop of Dalmatia, a labourer of the apostolic generation who carried the Gospel to the Adriatic coast. The Church keeps his memory on March 8, and again on April 8 among a company of the Seventy, and gathers him with the whole company at the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles on January 4. Because Romans 16:14 names in one breath both a Hermes and a Hermas, he is constantly confused with Hermas of Philippopolis (kept November 5), and with the shadowy Hermas to whom the second-century work The Shepherd is ascribed; the tradition distinguishes all three.

Of Hermes almost nothing survives beyond the single verse of Paul that names him and the tradition of the see he afterward governed. He belongs to that wide second company of the Lord's disciples, the Seventy, who are nowhere listed as a body in Scripture but are identified by the ancient hagiographers with the fellow-workers and faithful greeted by name across the Acts and the Epistles. In the roll of the Seventy Hermes is drawn from the salutations at the end of Romans 16, where Paul greets, among the Christians of Rome, "Hermes" in the company of Asyncritus, Phlegon, Patrobas and Hermas (Romans 16:14). The tradition makes him a bishop of Dalmatia — the Roman province along the eastern shore of the Adriatic — where he preached the Gospel and shepherded the infant Church, and where, having finished his apostolic labour, he reposed. Some notices add that he suffered for the faith; the Greek synaxarion keeps him without a martyr's title, remembering him as an apostle who "shone in Dalmatia."

The scriptural greeting is the whole of his certain record. What the feast asserts of him is what it asserts of all the Seventy: not a documented biography but the reality of the wider apostolate — that beyond the Twelve the Lord sent out a great company of labourers into his harvest, and that the Church remembers each of them, "the equal honour of each," whether his life be famous or, as here, little more than a name in an apostle's letter and the memory of a see.

Feast and commemoration

Hermes is kept on March 8 (church date; New Calendar civil March 8; Old Calendar civil March 21), the day on which the Greek Menaion commemorates the apostle together with Theophylact of Nicomedia. He is commemorated again on April 8, among a company of the apostles of the Seventy (with Herodion, Agabus, Rufus, Asyncritus, Phlegon and Hermes of Dalmatia), and with the whole company at the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles on January 4. The March 8 date commonly falls within Great Lent, on whose weekdays no fixed Epistle and Gospel are appointed and the office is kept with the Triodion.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 3

O holy Apostle Hermes, intercede with the merciful God, that he may grant to our souls the forgiveness of transgressions.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

Hermes is depicted, like the other apostles of the Seventy, as an apostle and bishop of the first age — in the tunic and himation of an apostle, or vested as a hierarch in phelonion and omophorion, holding the Gospel-book or a scroll and raising his hand in blessing. He has no distinctive individual attribute; his image is that of the apostolic bishop, and he appears most often within the Synaxis of the Seventy, ranged with the whole company. No securely identified public-domain image of this apostle alone has been stored; a menologion miniature for March 8 is wanting.

Disputed questions

  • Hermes or Hermas. Romans 16:14 names, in the same verse, both a Hermes (Greek Ἑρμῆς) and a Hermas (Ἑρμᾶς), and the tradition of the Seventy carries both, on separate days. The Greek Menaion for March 8 reads the apostle of this day as Ἑρμῆς — Hermes — and the Orthodox Church in America likewise names him Hermes, bishop of Dalmatia; this entry follows that reading. The Slavic books, however, and following them OrthodoxWiki and the Old-Calendar reckoning for March 21, give the March 8 apostle as Hermas, bishop of Philippopolis — that is, they identify him with the apostle kept on November 5. The two readings reflect the ancient tangle of the doubled name; this collection keeps them distinct, following the Greek: the March 8 (and April 8) apostle is Hermes of Dalmatia, and the November 5 apostle is Hermas of Philippopolis, whose entry records the same confusion from the other side.
  • Not the author of The Shepherd. A distinct early-Christian Hermas — a freedman of Rome and, by one tradition, brother of Pope Pius I — is named as the author of The Shepherd of Hermas, the popular second-century apocalypse. He is sometimes identified with the Hermas of Romans 16:14, but the identification is not secure and is generally set aside; in any case he is not the Hermes of Dalmatia kept on this day.
  • The see. The Greek tradition assigns Hermes to Dalmatia; the Slavic, in conflating him with the November 5 apostle, to Philippopolis in Thrace. The divergence follows the divergence of the name, and is recorded rather than resolved.

Sources

  1. Romans 16:14 — "Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brethren which are with them": the sole scriptural notice, naming both Hermes and Hermas in one verse.
  2. Greek Menaion and Synaxarion of Constantinople for March 8 (Ἑρμοῦ ἀποστόλου) — the commemoration of the apostle Hermes, verified live via saint.gr; the office sung from the common of the apostles.
  3. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, March 8 (consulted live) — the apostle "Hermes of the Seventy, bishop of Dalmatia," named in Romans 16:14.
  4. The catalogues of the Seventy (ascribed to Hippolytus of Rome and Dorotheus of Tyre) and Dimitry of Rostov's Lives of the Saints — the assignment of sees among the Seventy and the doubled Hermes/Hermas of Romans 16:14; with the companion entry Hermas, Patrobus, Linus, Gaius and Philologus of the Seventy for the confusion recorded from the November 5 side.