Martyrs of Niculitsel
The Holy Martyrs Zoticus, Attalus, Camasis and Philip of Niculitsel in Scythia Minor
Martyr · d. c. 320
Commemorated 4 June — Beheading at Noviodunum; martyrium discovered at Niculitsel in 1971
Four martyrs of Scythia Minor — Zoticus, Attalus, Camasis and Philip — beheaded by the Roman authorities of Noviodunum on the lower Danube and buried in a brick crypt near the village of Niculitsel in the Dobrogea. Their tomb was discovered in September 1971, when a stream in flood exposed one of the oldest known martyria of the region: a two-storey crypt with the inscription Martyrs of Christ on one wall, the four names scratched on the other, and in the upper chamber a single wooden coffin holding four decapitated bodies. In the lower chamber were the bones of two older, unnamed martyrs, reinterred there about 370–380. The Syriac Martyrology and the Martyrology of Jerome give June 4 as the day of their execution, and that is the day the Church keeps. Their relics were translated in 1971 to the Cocoș monastery.
Scythia Minor: a province of martyrs
The territory between the Danube and the Black Sea — Roman Scythia Minor, the Romanian Dobrogea — was the north-eastern march of the empire and a standing place of exile and execution for Christians who refused the state cult. Through the persecutions of Decius (249–251), of Diocletian and Maximian (284–305) and of Licinius (308–324), the sources and the archaeology together indicate very large numbers of Christian dead in this province, from cold, hunger, and torture as much as from formal sentence.
The practice of the Christians there is what makes the province exceptional for the historian: the relics of those who died confessing Christ were taken up and hidden, and written accounts of their sufferings were made and kept so that they should not be forgotten. When the persecutions ended, the hidden relics were moved into purpose-built crypts — martyria — and churches were raised over them. The ruins of several such churches can still be seen in the Dobrogea.
The discovery of 1971
In September 1971 a creek overflowed its banks near the village of Niculitsel in the county of Tulcea and cut into the ground, revealing one of the oldest martyria yet known in the region. It is built of brick and divided into two chambers, one above the other.
In the upper chamber stood a single wooden coffin containing the relics of four martyrs, all of them decapitated. Three of the heads lay in place at the neck; the fourth rested on the man's chest. On the left wall was painted the inscription "Martyrs of Christ"; on the right wall the four names had been scratched into the plaster: Zoticus, Attalus, Camasis, Philip.
In the lower chamber were found about a hundred fragments of the bones of two men, aged between forty-five and fifty, whose names are not known. The excavators judged that these two had died in the persecution of Decius and that their relics were reinterred at Niculitsel around 370–380, when the upper chamber was built over them — that is, that the martyrium was made for the four and set deliberately above the resting-place of two older martyrs of the same country.
The find is among the most important pieces of evidence for early Christianity on the lower Danube, because it joins a physical burial, a painted confession of faith, four names, and the manner of death, in one undisturbed context.
Noviodunum and the sentence
According to the records that have been preserved, the four were tried by the Roman authorities of Noviodunum — the fortress and fleet station on the Danube at the modern Isaccea, a few miles from Niculitsel — sentenced to death, beheaded, and then buried at Niculitsel. The manner of death matches the archaeology exactly.
The exact year is not transmitted. Two datings are argued: the early fourth century, in the persecution of Diocletian or of Licinius — the reading most commonly followed, and the one behind the conventional date of about 320 — and, alternatively, a martyrdom north of the Danube during the persecution of the Gothic king Athanaric (370–372) against the Christians, in which case the burial at Niculitsel would be a translation into the empire, as happened with Sabbas the Goth and the martyrs of Gotthia.
The wider company
The Synaxaria do not name only four. They list the four along with six others — Eutychius, Quirinus, Julia, Saturninus, Ninita and Fortunio — and record that twenty-five more were beheaded with them whose names were not preserved. The full company of the Niculitsel and Noviodunum martyrs is therefore considerably larger than the four whose names the crypt gives, and the four are the named heart of a group commemoration.
The Syriac Martyrology (the earliest surviving Christian calendar, of the fourth century) and the Martyrology of Jerome both give June 4 as the date of the execution — an unusually good documentary warrant for the day of a group of provincial martyrs, and the reason this commemoration is fixed on June 4 rather than on the day of the modern discovery.
Relics and veneration
The relics of the four were translated in 1971, the year of the discovery, to the Cocoș monastery in the Dobrogea, where they are venerated. The Romanian Orthodox Church proclaimed their veneration and composed an office for them; the commemoration has since spread through the Orthodox calendars in English, and the four stand among the protomartyrs of the Romanian lands.
Feast and commemoration
June 4 (church date; New Calendar civil June 4, Old Calendar civil June 17), kept with Saint Metrophanes of Constantinople. The day rests on the two oldest martyrologies of the Church, the Syriac and the Hieronymian, both of which give June 4 for the execution. The commemoration is principally Romanian, and is kept with solemnity at the Cocoș monastery where the relics lie and throughout the Dobrogea; it has entered the general Orthodox calendars in English through the Romanian and American lists, and appears in the Greek synaxarial lists as "the martyrs of Niculitsel." A proper Romanian service was composed after 1971 and is in copyright; the Byzantine common of several martyrs is used here.
Their day joins them, in the fixed calendar, to the other Danubian martyrs of the same persecutions — Sabbas the Goth (April 12) and the Twenty-six Martyrs of Gotthia (March 26).
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)
Thy martyrs Zoticus, Attalus, Camasis and Philip, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from thee our God; for having thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions, O Christ our God, save our souls.
Iconography
The four are painted as a company of laymen-martyrs: four figures standing frontally in a row, in tunic and mantle, of varying ages — the tradition distinguishes them chiefly by beard and hair — each holding the cross in the right hand, their names inscribed above them as they were inscribed on the wall of their crypt. Romanian iconography of the commemoration, which is where the type has been developed since 1971, frequently sets behind them the brick martyrium with its two chambers, or the church of the Cocoș monastery that holds their relics, and may include the inscription Martyrii Christi — "the martyrs of Christ" — copied from the crypt wall. A narrative version shows the beheading at Noviodunum, and the burial of the four in the single coffin.
No pre-1900 icon of them exists or could exist in the ordinary sense: their names were unknown between antiquity and 1971, when the crypt was opened, and their entire pictorial tradition is therefore modern and the property of living Romanian iconographers. No image is stored, and none is likely to become storable; a photograph of the excavated tomb exists on Wikimedia Commons but is a photograph of an archaeological site and not an icon.
Disputed questions
- Date of the martyrdom. Early fourth century (Diocletian or Licinius), the majority view and the basis of the conventional c. 320; or 370–372, under the Gothic king Athanaric, with a subsequent translation of the relics across the Danube. The archaeology of the crypt is consistent with either, since the upper chamber is dated to about 370–380 in any case — on the first view it is a martyrium built two generations after the deaths, on the second it is contemporary with them.
- The two unnamed martyrs below. Their identity is unknown; the attribution to the Decian persecution rests on the stratigraphy and on the general history of the province, not on any inscription.
- The names. Camasis appears also as Camasius and Attalus as Atallus; the spelling of the scratched inscription is the primary witness. Zoticus here is not to be confused with Zoticus the Orphanotrophos of Constantinople, nor Philip with the Apostle.
- Number. Four named in the crypt; ten named in the Synaxaria; some thirty-five in all according to the same notice. This entry is a group file for the four, and names the others in the body rather than asserting a definitive roll.