Justus, Justin and their Companions
The Holy Martyrs Justus, Justin, Chariton, Charito the Virgin, Euelpistus, Hierax, Paeon and Liberian, who suffered at Rome
Martyr · Virgin · d. c. 165, Rome
Commemorated 1 June — Beheaded at Rome with Justin the Philosopher under the prefect Rusticus
Under this title the Greek Menaion and the Slavic synaxaria keep, on June 1, the little company of Christians who were tried and beheaded at Rome about the year 165 together with Justin the Philosopher: Chariton, the virgin Charito, Euelpistus — a slave of the emperor's household, Cappadocian by birth — Hierax from Iconium in Phrygia, Paeon, and Liberian (whom the Slavic books call Valerian), with a Justin and a Justus who are almost certainly the philosopher himself, doubled in transmission. Their interrogation before the urban prefect Q. Junius Rusticus survives in the Acts of Justin, one of the earliest and soberest of all martyr-acts; each in turn confessed Christ, and to the command that they sacrifice they answered together: "Do what you will, for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols." They were scourged and beheaded.
The company
The company was not a family and not a congregation but a school: the men and women who came to Justin's lodging above the bath of Myrtinus at Rome to hear him teach the Christian philosophy. The Acts let each of them speak, and in a few lines give a picture of the Roman Church of the second century that no other document supplies.
- Chariton answered that he was a Christian "by the command of God."
- Charito — a woman, and named in the Greek synaxaria ἡ παρθένος, the virgin — said simply that she was a Christian by the grace of God. (The manuscripts and the derived calendars vary her name between Charito, Charites and Charita, and the Slavic lists sometimes make her a man.)
- Euelpistus, questioned about his condition, described himself as a slave of Caesar who was nonetheless a Christian, freed by Christ, and a sharer with the rest in the same hope; he had received the faith from Christian parents, and was a Cappadocian.
- Hierax came from Iconium in Phrygia; he too had been brought up in the faith by his parents, and had been dragged from his own country, but said that his true parents were now in Christ.
- Paeon (Παίων; Peon, Peonus in the calendars) had likewise learned Christianity from his parents and held the tradition he had received from them.
- Liberian (Λιβεριανός; Valerian in the Slavic books) confessed with the others.
That two of them were imperial slaves or freedmen, one a provincial from Phrygia, one a Cappadocian, and one an unmarried woman, is itself a document: Justin's Roman school drew from every rank of the city, and the Church's faith was already being handed down in ordinary households from parents to children.
The trial before Rusticus
The prefect of the city, Q. Junius Rusticus — a Stoic, and one of the teachers of the emperor Marcus Aurelius — examined them about the year 165. The procedure was the ordinary one for the nomen Christianum: no crime was charged, only the name, and the way out was a single act of sacrifice. Rusticus began with Justin, then went through the company man by man, asking each the same short questions — are you a Christian? who taught you? where are your parents? — and receiving the same short answers. Not one of them wavered, and not one of them was eloquent; the effect of the record is precisely its plainness.
When the questioning was done Rusticus made the customary appeal to their self-interest: they should consider themselves, sacrifice to the gods, and be spared. They replied with one voice, "Do what you will, for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols." The sentence followed in the formula of the law — that those who would not sacrifice to the gods nor obey the edict of the emperor should be scourged and led away to suffer decapitation according to the laws. They were taken to the place of execution, and there, the Acts say, they glorified God and were beheaded, perfecting their testimony in the confession of the Saviour. Certain of the faithful secretly carried away their bodies and laid them in a becoming place.
Feast and commemoration
The company is commemorated on June 1 (church date; New Calendar civil June 1, Old Calendar civil June 14), in the same service as Justin the Philosopher, whose companions they were. The Greek books give them a separate synaxarion notice under the head of "the other Justin"; the Slavic and OCA calendars fold them into the entry "Martyr Justin the Philosopher and those with him at Rome," and this is the form the Antiochian usage follows. No proper hymns of their own are appointed: they are sung in the martyrs' commons with Justin's propers.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)
O holy martyrs, who fought the good fight and received your crowns, entreat the Lord that He have mercy on our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
They are painted as a group of martyrs of the Roman world, standing in a row and holding crosses: men in tunic and mantle, of varying age — Euelpistus and Hierax commonly shown as younger, beardless figures, in keeping with their servile and provincial condition — and among them a single woman, Charito, veiled in a maphorion and holding her cross like the rest. In menologion cycles for June they appear behind Justin the Philosopher, who is given the sages' dress and the book; where the passion itself is shown, the scene is the group standing before a seated magistrate on a dais, with the executioner and sword at the right. No pre-1900 image of this company alone has been located for this collection: the surviving June menaion-icons and frescoes depict Justin the Philosopher singly, and no candidate could be verified as showing the companions.
Disputed questions
- How many Justins? The Greek Synaxaristes for June 1 lists this company under the names "Justus, Justin, Chariton, Charito the virgin, Euelpistus, Hierax, Paeon and Liberian," immediately after and separately from the notice of Justin the Philosopher; the Prologue of Ohrid likewise gives "the other Justin" his own entry. The authentic Acts, however, know only one Justin — the philosopher — tried with exactly the six companions named above, and no Justus at all. The most economical account of the discrepancy is that a synaxarist, finding the same martyrdom described in two sources, took the Justin of the second for a different man, and that the additional Justus is a scribal doubling of Justin. Modern editors of the Acts therefore print seven martyrs in all, headed by the philosopher. This entry preserves the second commemoration because the liturgical books preserve it, and because the six companions are in any case distinct persons deserving their own notice; but the reader should not suppose that a second philosopher-martyr of the same name existed. See the same question under Justin the Philosopher → Disputed questions.
- Charito's sex and name. The Greek is unambiguous — Χαριτώ is a woman's name and she is styled the virgin — but the forms Charites and Charita in the Latin and Slavic transmission have produced lists in which she is masculine. The Acts address her as one of the company without further description; the Greek synaxarion's "virgin" is the ground for counting a virgin-martyr among them.
- Liberian or Valerian. Λιβεριανός in the Greek Acts and Menaion; Valerian in the Slavonic and in the OCA list, by the ordinary confusion of Λ and Β in transmission. They are one man.
- Not to be confused with the several other saints named Chariton — above all Chariton the Confessor of Palestine (September 28), the father of Judean monasticism, with whom this Roman martyr has nothing in common but the name.
- Not to be confused, further, with Justus of Rome (July 14), the soldier converted by a vision of the Cross and burnt at Magnesia, whom the Slavic calendars likewise style "Justus the Roman." He belongs to a different day and a different passion.