Marinus the Elder
The Holy Martyr Marinus the Elder, at Anazarbus in Cilicia
Martyr · d. c. 304
Commemorated 18 October — Martyrdom in Cilicia under Diocletian
Marinus the Elder (†c. 304) was an aged Christian of Cilicia in Asia Minor who confessed Christ in the great persecution of Diocletian, before Lysias, the governor who fills the martyr-acts of that province with victims. Styled "the Elder" (ὁ γέρων) by the Greek synaxaria to distinguish him among the several martyrs of his name, he endured fierce beatings and torments in his old age and was beheaded — "young in daring," as the synaxarion verse says of the old man, "he is perfected by the sword." He is commemorated on October 18, in the shadow of the feast of the Apostle Luke.
The record of Marinus is a synaxarion notice, and this entry keeps to it. He was a Christian of Cilicia — the sources associate him with Anazarbus and with Tarsus, the province's two great cities, the OCA styling him "at Anazarbus" and the Russian menologies "of Anazarbus, of Tarsus" — and he was already an old man when the persecution of Diocletian (284–305) reached the province. Denounced or presenting himself as a Christian, he was brought before Lysias, the governor of Cilicia seated at Tarsus, whose name recurs in the acts of the Cilician martyrs of these same years (it is the Slavic tradition's name also for the persecutor of Domnina of Anazarbus, who suffered in the same city). Neither his age nor the customary arguments moved the governor, and neither threats nor the fierce beatings that followed moved the old man; after his tortures he was put to death, by beheading according to the Greek tradition, about the year 304.
The Greek synaxarion honours him with a distich that turns on his age: "The old man Marinus refutes the error grown old; young in daring, he is perfected by the sword" — idolatry pictured as an aged crone (γραῦς πλάνη), confounded by an elder whose courage was younger than his years.
Feast and commemoration
Marinus is commemorated on October 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 31) in the Greek, Slavic, OCA and Antiochian-use calendars alike, always in second place after the Apostle and Evangelist Luke, whose feast owns the day. The Greek Menaion of October 18 appoints a full service only for the apostle; Marinus has no proper hymns transmitted, and his memory is kept by the synaxarion reading. The epithet "the Elder" is his calendar identity: the calendars know several other martyrs Marinus — among them Marinus of Rome (December 16) and the soldier Marinus of Caesarea whose story Eusebius tells — and the epithet, with the Cilician setting, keeps this old man distinct from them all (see the reciprocal "not to be confused" note in the Marinus of Rome entry).
Iconography
No individual iconographic tradition of Marinus the Elder has been found: he would be painted as an aged martyr, white-bearded, in chiton and himation with the martyr's cross in hand. The Menologion of Basil II gives its October 18 miniature to the burial of the Apostle Luke, and no pre-modern image securely depicting this Marinus was located (the Menologion's Marinus miniature belongs to Marinus of Rome, December 16 — rejected here on identity grounds); the saint is accordingly listed among the wanted icons.