Hermogenes the Martyr
The Holy Martyr Hermogenes
Martyr
Commemorated 24 July — Martyrdom by the drawing out of his teeth
Hermogenes is one of the bare names of the Synaxarion of Constantinople, entered under July 24 after the great martyr Christina of Tyre and beside the martyrs Capito and Hymenaeus. The single thing transmitted about him is the manner of his death, which is unusual enough to have kept him in the calendar when his story was lost: his teeth were drawn out, and he died of it. No city, no persecutor, no year and no relics are recorded, and no office is appointed to him. He is kept in Greek usage only.
What the synaxarion transmits
The whole of the tradition is a line and a distich. The manner of death — the extraction of the teeth — is rare in the martyrologies and belongs to the class of tortures aimed at the organ of confession: as the tongue is cut out to silence the martyr's word, so the teeth are drawn from the mouth that would not sacrifice. The compilers of the synaxarion liked such deaths precisely because a distich could be made of them, and it is likely that the couplet is all that ever stood behind the notice. No persecution is named, no province, no companion, no burial.
The name Hermogenes — "born of Hermes" — is among the commonest of Greek personal names and is borne by a considerable number of saints, which is the chief practical difficulty with this commemoration: an unqualified "Martyr Hermogenes" in a calendar or an index is ambiguous, and the July 24 Hermogenes is the least documented of them all.
Feast and commemoration
July 24 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 6), in the Greek Menaion, as a bare notice beneath the office of the great martyr Christina of Tyre. He does not appear on the OCA day-page, in the Slavonic books, or in Antiochian usage, and has no proper hymnography.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and broke also the feeble insolence of demons. By his prayers, O Christ our God, save our souls.
Iconography
There is no proper iconography of this Hermogenes and there is no way to make one: a saint of whom nothing is known but a name and a mouth full of drawn teeth offers the painter no attribute that would distinguish him from any other martyr. In a menologion cycle for July he would be given the standard figure of the lay martyr — a man in tunic and mantle, holding the small cross — and identified by the inscription alone. Any image labelled simply "St Hermogenes" is far more likely to be one of the well-documented saints of the name listed above, and for that reason no candidate can safely be attached to this entry. The Menologion of Basil II runs only from September to February and cannot supply a July saint.
No storable image has been located, and none is likely to be; he is listed among the wanted icons.
Disputed questions
- Whether he belongs to the company of Capito and Hymenaeus. Some modern lists, OrthodoxWiki among them, print a group "Martyrs Capito, Hymenaeus and Hermogenes" for this day — and then also print "Martyr Hermogenes" separately in the same list, which points to a conflation within the list rather than to a distinct tradition. The Greek synaxarion carries two notices with two different manners of death, and this collection keeps them apart while recording the alternative. See Capito and Hymenaeus.
- Not to be confused with the other saints of the name already in this collection: Hermogenes the brother of Callista, one of Callista, Evodus and Hermogenes (September 1, †c. 309, Nicomedia); and Hermogenes of Menas, Hermogenes and Eugraphus (December 10, †c. 313, Alexandria), the eparch sent to try St Menas who was converted by him. Both of those have full passions and fixed dossiers; neither has any connection with the July 24 notice beyond the name. Nor is he the Hermogenes who appears in the later Russian calendar as Patriarch Hermogenes of Moscow (†1612), a wholly distinct saint of a different age and country.
- The manner of death. "By having his teeth pulled out" is the reading of the current English enumerations of the day, which follow the Greek. Where a manner of death rests on a single distich the wording of the couplet is the only evidence, and a figurative reading cannot be excluded; but the plain sense is the one the calendars have always taken.