Mark of Arethusa
The Holy Hieromartyr Mark, Bishop of Arethusa, and Cyril the Deacon
Hieromartyr · Bishop · Confessor · Deacon · d. c. 364
Commemorated 29 March — Sufferings of Mark of Arethusa and Cyril the deacon under Julian
Mark, bishop of Arethusa in Syria, and Cyril, a deacon of Heliopolis, were confessors who suffered cruelly under Julian the Apostate. Mark, an aged bishop who in the days of Constantine had destroyed a pagan temple and built a church, was seized when Julian sought to restore paganism, and was tortured with such savagery — smeared with honey and hung up in the sun to be stung by wasps and bees — that his very persecutors were shamed by his endurance; Cyril, who had broken idols, was likewise martyred. Their steadfastness is recorded by Gregory the Theologian and the church historians.
Mark was bishop of Arethusa (Ar-Rastan) on the Orontes in Syria. Under the emperor Constantine, in the zeal of the newly-freed Church, he had thrown down a temple of the idols in his city and raised a church in its place — an act that the pagans of Arethusa never forgot. When Julian the Apostate came to the throne and set himself to revive paganism, the pagans of the city demanded that Mark rebuild their temple or pay its full cost. The aged bishop refused to do either, holding it unlawful to give even a coin toward idolatry, and rather than flee (as he might have done, and did at first, until he learned that others were being seized on his account) he gave himself up.
His tormentors treated him with extraordinary cruelty. They dragged the old man through the streets, beat him, cut his ears with cords, thrust him into filth, and at last — the detail preserved by Gregory the Theologian and by the historians Theodoret and Sozomen — smeared his body with honey and brine and hung him up in a basket in the heat of the day, that the wasps, bees and flies might sting and devour him. All the while Mark, hanging above his enemies, is said to have mocked their folly with serene words, until his patience and dignity so confounded them that many were moved, and even the prefect of the province wrote to Julian that they were gaining nothing but shame. He survived his torments and lived out his days honoured as a confessor.
Cyril, a deacon of Heliopolis (Baalbek), had in the Christian years broken many of the idols of that stubbornly pagan city. Under Julian the pagans took their revenge: he was seized, and — the account says — killed with savagery, some of his persecutors in their fury committing outrages upon his body. He is honoured with Mark as a martyr of the same persecution.
Feast and commemoration
March 29 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 11), within Great Lent. Of particular note in the Antiochian tradition as martyrs of the Syrian church under Julian.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a hieromartyr)
And by thy manner of life thou didst attain unto the reward of the wise, O hieromartyr Mark: for by teaching well thou hast gained the talents entrusted to thee; thou wast not silent in the midst of trials, but didst offer thyself unto suffering for Christ. Wherefore, intercede with Him that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Mark is shown as an aged bishop in the omophorion; his passion (the basket and the wasps) may be shown beside him. Cyril appears as a deacon in the sticharion and orarion. The stored image is a 19th-century menaion icon by Osip Chirikov (State Museum of the History of Religion): the aged bishop full-length in jewelled phelonion and omophorion, named in the title cartouches, with the Slavonic date-line "month of March, the 29th day" — his very feast — painted along the lower border.