Lucius the Senator
The Holy Martyr Lucius the Senator
Martyr · d. c. 310, beheaded
Commemorated 20 August — Martyrdom by the sword
Lucius is a martyr of the councillor class commemorated on August 20, of whom the synaxaria preserve his rank, his manner of death, and — with a disagreement that has never been settled — the island on which he suffered. He was a bouleutēs, a member of a city council, and was beheaded for confessing Christ about the year 310, in the last phase of the Diocletianic persecution. The Greek tradition and the English-language synaxaria that depend on it place him in Cyprus; the Orthodox Church in America places him in Crete. Nothing further is transmitted, and nothing further is supplied here.
The whole of the record is a synaxarion line: Ὁ ἅγιος Λούκιος ὁ βουλευτὴς ξίφει τελειοῦται — "the holy Lucius the councillor was perfected by the sword."
Three things are therefore given. He was a βουλευτής, a bouleutēs or decurio: a member of the curia, the council of a Greek or Roman city. The title is worth pausing on, because it is not honorific but burdensome. The councillors of the later Empire were the men held personally liable for the collection of the imperial taxes of their city, bound to their order by law and to its public duties by inheritance; and those duties included the maintenance of the civic cult and, in a persecution, attendance at the public sacrifices. A curial who became a Christian could not simply withdraw, as a labourer might: his refusal to sacrifice was a public act performed before his own city and its magistrates, and it is precisely such men — visible, propertied, and legally unable to disappear — whom the edicts of 303–311 caught first and most surely.
He died by the sword, which is itself a datum: decapitation was the penalty reserved for those who held citizenship and rank, as against the fire, the beasts and the mines to which the poor were sent. The manner of his death therefore confirms his station, and the two facts hang together.
And the year given is 310, which places him not in the first fury of 303 but in the drawn-out persecution of Maximinus Daia in the eastern provinces, when the sacrificial tests were revived and pressed upon the cities of the Aegean, of Cyprus and of the Syrian coast.
Nothing else survives — no name of a judge, no city, no acts. The synaxarion's brevity is reproduced here rather than repaired.
Feast and commemoration
August 20 (church date; New Calendar civil August 20, Old Calendar civil September 2), within the Afterfeast of the Dormition. His name is carried in the Greek synaxaria and by the OCA; the Russian calendar for the day (September 2 New Style), consulted live, does not list him. No office is appointed him, the day's service being that of the Dormition afterfeast with the Prophet Samuel.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4
Thy martyr Lucius, O Lord, in his contest received an imperishable crown from thee our God; for having thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble arrogance of the demons: by his prayers save thou our souls.
Iconography
No image of this martyr has been identified. Were he painted, it would be in the form the menologia give to martyrs of the curial and senatorial class: a mature man in the long chlamys and tablion of civil rank rather than in military dress, bare-headed, holding the martyr's cross, with the sword of his passion set beside him or in the hand of the executioner in the narrative register. No storable image has been located, and none is likely for a saint known from a single line. The Menologion of Basil II covers only September to February and cannot supply an August martyr.
Disputed questions
- Cyprus or Crete? The Greek synaxarial tradition and the calendars that follow it style him "Lucius the senator of Cyprus." The Orthodox Church in America's day-page for August 20, consulted live, states instead that he "was beheaded by the sword on the island of Crete in the year 310." The two islands are not otherwise confused in this dossier, and no source known to this entry adjudicates between them; both readings are recorded, neither is adopted, and the entry's record carries no place of death. The year 310 is common to both.
- Not to be confused with Lucius the Soldier, the martyr by fire commemorated six days earlier on August 14, nor with Lucius of the Seventy, the apostolic man named at Romans 16:21. The name is among the commonest in the Latin onomasticon and recurs repeatedly in the calendar; the senator of August 20 is distinguished by his rank and by the sword.