Hyacinth of Amastris
The Holy Martyr Hyacinth of Amastris in Paphlagonia
Martyr · Wonderworker · d. 4th century, in prison at Amastris
Commemorated 18 July — Repose in prison after torture at Amastris
Hyacinth was a martyr of Amastris in Paphlagonia — the Black Sea port that is now Amasra in northern Turkey — whose short notice in the synaxaria is remembered chiefly for two things: that he was named by an angel, and that as a child of three he prayed a dead infant back to life. Grown up in the ascetic life together with the child he had raised, he came upon his townsmen worshipping a sacred tree and cut it down. For this he was seized and tortured: his teeth were struck out, he was bound with ropes and dragged along the ground, and he was thrown into prison, where he died of his wounds. His memory is kept on July 18.
Amastris and the naming by the angel
Amastris was a Greek foundation on the Paphlagonian coast, named for the Persian princess Amastris, and in Roman and Byzantine times the metropolis of that stretch of the Black Sea — the city that would later be shepherded by George of Amastris (Feb 21). Hyacinth was born there of pious Christian parents, at a time when the town, like much of the interior of Paphlagonia, kept a good deal of its old cult alongside the new faith. The synaxarion opens with a marvel: an angel appeared and gave the child his name, and the parents called him Hyacinth accordingly.
The raising of the dead infant
The one miracle attached to him belongs to his infancy. When he was three years old, an infant of the town died; and the child Hyacinth prayed to God that it might be given back. "The Lord hearkened to his childish prayer," the notice says, "and the dead one arose." The two children were afterwards brought up together, and both, when they came of age, gave themselves to the ascetic life.
The tree and the passion
Some years later Hyacinth saw the people of his city gathered in worship before a tree — one of the sacred trees that stood at the centre of much rural cult in Asia Minor, hung with offerings and served with sacrifice. He took an axe and cut it down.
The vengeance of the townsmen was immediate and brutal, and the synaxarion reports it without any of the usual apparatus of governors and tribunals: they knocked out all his teeth, bound him with a rope and dragged him along the ground, and threw him into prison. There, of the injuries done him, he died — not executed by sentence but killed by the crowd, as many martyrs of the Anatolian countryside were.
Feast and commemoration
July 18 (church date; New Calendar civil July 18, Old Calendar civil July 31), kept together with Emilian of Dorostolum, with whom he is paired in nearly every calendar of the day — the Greek, Slavonic and Antiochian books all give the two names in the same line. He has no proper office; the commons of a martyr are used.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Hyacinth, 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
Kontakion — Tone 2
Named by an angel before men knew thee, and raising the dead while yet a child at the breast, thou didst cut down the tree of error and wast dragged in bonds for the love of Christ; wherefore, O Hyacinth, having ended thy course in the prison, thou dost intercede unceasingly for us all.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Hyacinth is painted as a beardless youth in tunic and mantle, holding the cross of martyrdom; where the scene of his passion is shown, the attributes are the felled tree and the rope by which he was dragged, and in some Slavonic menologia an axe. Because he suffered in Paphlagonia and is remembered only by a short notice, he appears in the painters' books among the crowd of July martyrs rather than as a subject in his own right; the Menologion of Basil II, which would be the natural first resort for a minor saint, covers only September to February and offers nothing for July 18. No pre-1900 icon of Hyacinth of Amastris has been located for this collection; images filed under the name "Hyacinth" on the public repositories belong to the Roman martyr or to Hyacinth of Caesarea and were rejected as depicting a different saint.
Disputed questions
- Age at martyrdom. The synaxarion gives his age only for the miracle (three years old), and then says that he and the raised child "grew up together and lived an ascetic life" before the incident of the tree; he was therefore a young man, not an infant, when he suffered. Some English calendars and popular lists, compressing the notice, describe him as a small child martyred for pulling down an idol; that reading collapses two separate stages of the account, and this entry does not follow it.
- Date. No emperor, governor or year is transmitted. The fourth century is the usual assignment (so the Slavonic calendars and the OCA), but it rests on the general character of the notice rather than on any datum in it; a somewhat earlier date cannot be excluded.
- Not to be confused with Hyacinth of Caesarea (July 3), the young chamberlain of the emperor Trajan starved to death in prison at Rome — a different martyr of the same name whose feast falls a fortnight earlier in the same month, and whose entry carries the reciprocal note; nor with the Hyacinth martyred with Eugenia of Rome (Dec 24); nor with the Roman Hyacinth commemorated with Protus.