Hypatius and Andrew of Ephesus
The Holy Hieromartyrs Hypatius the Bishop and Andrew the Presbyter
Hieromartyr · Bishop · Priest · d. c. 730–735
Commemorated 21 September — Martyrdom under Leo the Isaurian
Hypatius, bishop of Ephesus, and Andrew his presbyter were martyred around 730–735 under the iconoclast emperor Leo III the Isaurian, among the first victims of the imperial war on the holy icons. Schooled together in a monastery from youth, the one became a monk and bishop, the other a priest and preacher; both openly defended the veneration of icons when Leo began to cast them out of the churches. After debate before the emperor, long imprisonment, and torture — the accounts relate that icons were burned upon their heads — they were dragged through the city and put to death, and the faithful buried what the persecutors had thrown to the dogs.
The two saints were companions from boyhood, educated together in a monastery. Hypatius took the monastic tonsure and rose to be a bishop — the tradition followed by the Slavic lives and the OCA makes him bishop of Ephesus — while Andrew was ordained presbyter and became a zealous teacher of the faithful.
When the emperor Leo III the Isaurian (717–741) opened his campaign against the holy icons — commonly dated from his edicts of about 726 and 730 — and the images began to be thrown out of the churches, trampled, and burned, Hypatius and Andrew stood openly for the Orthodox veneration of the icons and strengthened their flock to hold fast. Summoned by the emperor, they defended icon-veneration in formal debate; unable to be argued down, they were thrown into prison and held there long, in the hope that their resolve would rot with the delay. It did not, and the emperor turned to torture: the accounts transmitted in the synaxaria relate that they were beaten, that the skin and hair were flayed from their heads, that their beards were smeared with tar and set alight, and — the persecutors' theological jest — that holy icons were burned upon their heads. Still alive, they were dragged through the city for mockery and then slain, about the year 730–735. Their bodies were thrown to the dogs, and the faithful recovered and buried them with reverence.
Feast and commemoration
September 21 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 4), at the leavetaking of the Elevation of the Cross. The commemoration is carried chiefly by the Slavic calendars and the OCA on this day; the pair have no proper service in the received Menaion, and no proper troparion or kontakion is transmitted — the common hymns of hieromartyrs serve where a service is needed.
Iconography
No securely identified pre-modern image of the pair has been found; a the list of icons still being sought listing stands in their place. They would be depicted as an elderly bishop in omophorion and a younger presbyter in phelonion, each holding an icon — the standard iconography of the icon-defending confessors — or in the scene of their torments.
Disputed questions
- See and setting. The Slavic-tradition lives style Hypatius bishop of Ephesus and place the debate before the emperor himself, implying Constantinople; some Greek notices are vaguer about the see. The precise year is likewise unfixed (c. 730–735 in the Russian sources).
- Not to be confused with Hypatius, the sixth-century metropolitan of Ephesus (a correspondent, ironically, in an early controversy about images), nor with the hieromartyr Hypatius of Gangra (March 31), nor with Hypatius the abbot of Rufinianae. The Andrew here is likewise distinct from Andrew of Crete the hymnographer and from Andrew the Calybite, another martyr of the iconoclast persecutions.