Lucius the Soldier
The Holy Martyr Lucius the Soldier
Martyr
Commemorated 14 August — Martyrdom by fire
Lucius is a soldier-martyr commemorated in the Greek synaxaria on August 14 of whom the tradition preserves a single sentence: he was martyred by fire. Neither his country, his date, his judge, nor the occasion of his passion has come down; the notice is one of the shortest in the calendar, and the entry below does not enlarge it.
The whole of the transmitted record is the synaxarion's line: Ὁ Ἅγιος Λούκιος ὁ Μάρτυρας ὁ στρατιώτης — Μαρτύρησε διὰ πυρός, "The holy martyr Lucius the soldier — he was martyred by fire."
Two facts, therefore, are given. He was a soldier: one of the many in the calendar who held the emperor's commission and were required, sooner or later, to choose between the military oath and the confession of Christ, and whose passions were remembered by the churches near their garrisons long after the details had faded. And he died by fire — burned alive, or cast into a furnace, the penalty the Roman courts reserved for the contumacious and for the low-born, and one that left no body for the Christians to gather, which may itself be part of the reason so little of his story survives.
Nothing else is recorded, and nothing is here supplied. The Church keeps the name and the manner of the death, which is what the martyr's own generation thought worth handing on; the synaxarion's brevity is a form of honesty and is reproduced rather than repaired.
Feast and commemoration
Lucius is commemorated on August 14 (church date; New Calendar civil August 14, Old Calendar civil August 27), the last day of the Dormition fast and the Forefeast of the Dormition. His name is carried in the Greek synaxaria; the Slavic calendars for the day do not list him. No office is appointed him, the day's service being that of the forefeast.
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, and none is likely: saints known from a single synaxarion line are rarely given an individual type. Were he painted, it would be in the soldier-martyr form — the short tunic and military cloak, the cross in the right hand, the weapons laid aside — with the flames of his passion indicated behind him. No storable image has been located. The Menologion of Basil II covers only September to February and cannot supply an August martyr.
Disputed questions
- Date and place unknown. The notice attaches no emperor, province or year. This entry accordingly carries no century, and Lucius is indexed among the saints whose era the sources do not fix.
- Not to be confused with Lucius of the Seventy, the apostle named at Romans 16:21 and commemorated among the Seventy, nor with Lucius the Senator, the martyr of the councillor class beheaded about 310 and commemorated six days later on August 20, nor with the several other martyrs of this very common Latin name in the calendar. The soldier of August 14 is distinguished only by his day and by the fire.