Martyrs of Pisidia
The Holy Martyrs who suffered in Pisidia, one thousand and fifteen in number
Martyr
Commemorated 16 July — Beheading of the company in Pisidia
A great company of martyrs beheaded in Pisidia, in the highlands of southern Asia Minor, whose number the manuscripts give as one thousand and fifteen and, in another reading, as fifteen thousand. Beyond the place, the manner of their death and the number, the synaxarion transmits nothing whatever: no names, no emperor, no magistrate, no year. They are commemorated on July 16.
The notice is a single line of the Greek synaxaristis: the holy martyrs in Pisidia were perfected by beheading, and we have no further details of their martyrdom. This entry does not go beyond it, and nothing in the tradition permits a narrative to be constructed.
What can honestly be said is contextual. Pisidia — Antioch of Pisidia, Sagalassos, Apamea, and the towns of the Taurus foothills — was evangelised in the first generation, by Paul and Barnabas on the first journey, and had a large and long-established Christian population by the time of the general persecutions. Companies of this size in the synaxaria usually record either a mass execution following the refusal of a whole town to sacrifice, or the accumulated dead of one province over a persecution, gathered under a single day. Either would fit the notice; neither is stated.
Feast and commemoration
July 16 (church date; New Calendar civil July 16, Old Calendar civil July 29), among the commemorations of the day in the Greek synaxaristis and the older synaxarion listings. The company has no office of its own; where the memory is kept, the common of many martyrs is sung. Slavonic and Antiochian day-lists for July 16 generally omit it.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee our God; for possessed of Thy strength they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons: by their prayers, O Christ God, save Thou our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Anonymous companies of this kind are painted in the menologion cycles as a crowd of haloed heads — a compressed rank of faces of both sexes and every age, the front figures in tunic and mantle holding crosses, the rest indicated only by overlapping nimbi — with, in the narrative version, the executioner and the sword at one side and the bodies of the first beheaded at the martyrs' feet. Nothing distinguishes the Pisidian company from any other numbered host in the calendar, and no image of it identified by inscription has been located.
Disputed questions
- The number. The Greek synaxaristis heads the notice fifteen thousand; the English synaxarion listings and the older day-lists give one thousand and fifteen. The two are a copyist's variance in the Greek numerals rather than two traditions, and the smaller figure is the one usually printed. The corpus records both and asserts neither.
- The anonymous women martyrs of the same day. The Greek synaxarion of July 16 carries, immediately after this notice, another of the same kind: many holy women martyrs, likewise beheaded, likewise without names, place or date. Whether these belong with the Pisidian company or form a separate commemoration cannot be determined from the notices; they are listed separately in the calendar file for the day.
- Not to be confused with the named Pisidian martyrs already in the corpus — Bianor and Silvanus of Pisidia (July 10) — who are a distinct commemoration of the same province and not members of this anonymous company.
- No century is assigned. Since no date whatever is transmitted, the entry carries no century field and indexes under unknown.