Lollianus the Martyr
The Holy Martyr Lollianus
Martyr
Commemorated 15 July — Martyrdom by trampling
Lollianus is one of the names that the Synaxarion of Constantinople has carried down without a life attached. He stands second among the three commemorations of July 15 in the Greek Menaion, between Cyricus and Julitta and Abudimus of Tenedos, and the whole of what is transmitted about him is contained in his two-line distich: that he ran the road to his end with eager feet, and that his end came by the feet of others — that is, that he was trampled or kicked to death. No city, no persecutor, no date and no relics are recorded. This entry records exactly that, and does not supply a life he has not left.
The Greek Menaion's synaxarion for July 15 reads, after the notice of Cyricus and Julitta: Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ, Μνήμη τοῦ Ἁγίου μάρτυρος Λολλιανοῦ — "On the same day, the memory of the holy martyr Lollianus" — followed by the distich Ποσὶ προθύμοις ἔδραμε τρίβον τέλους, / Ὁ Λολλιανός, οὗ ποσίκρουστον τέλος: "With eager feet he ran the path of his ending, / Lollianus, whose ending was struck by feet."
The couplet is built on a play the Greek makes easily and English does not: the martyr's own willing feet carry him to his contest, and feet are the instrument of his death. What lies behind it is the manner of martyrdom the synaxaria call ποσὶ κρουσθεὶς ἐτελειώθη — "he was perfected by being struck with feet," beaten down and trampled by the crowd or by his executioners until he died. Some later Greek retellings add that the trampling was done by a mob of boys or youths set upon him, but this is not in the earliest notice and is not asserted here.
The name is Roman — Lollianus, from the gens Lollia — and is common enough in the eastern provinces in the second and third centuries, but it gives no purchase on his date. The persecution under which he suffered is nowhere named, and this entry accordingly carries no century.
Feast and commemoration
July 15 (church date; New Calendar civil July 15, Old Calendar civil July 28), rank primary. He is a Greek commemoration: he is carried by the printed Greek Menaion and by the Synaxarion of Constantinople, but he is absent from the Slavonic books and from the OCA and Russian calendars for the day, which list only Vladimir of Kiev, Cyricus and Julitta and Abudimus of Tenedos. No service is appointed to him; the day's office belongs to Cyricus and Julitta.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Lollianus, 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
Iconography
There is no iconography of Lollianus. He has no attested image, no attribute beyond the martyr's cross, and no place in the surviving menologion cycles; where a July menologion icon carries all the day's names, he would appear only as one of the ranked martyr figures behind Julitta and the child. No image has been sought or stored for this entry, and none is expected to exist.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the martyr Lollion the New (Λολλίων ὁ Νέος), commemorated on June 23 in the Greek synaxarion, who was beaten to death with staves. The two are distinguished in the books by day, by epithet ("the New") and by instrument, but the resemblance of name and of manner of death is close enough that Latin martyrologies have on occasion run them together. Lollion the New is not yet authored in this collection and is listed as a pending commemoration under June 23.