Eikon

Meletius Stratelates and Companions

The Holy Martyr Meletius Stratelates and those who suffered with him in Galatia

Martyr · Child Martyr · d. 2nd century

Commemorated 24 May — Martyrdom in Galatia with a great company of soldiers, women and children

Meletius, called Stratelates ("the General"), was by the synaxarial tradition a Christian military commander in Galatia in Asia Minor in the second century, under the emperor Antoninus Pius, who with the soldiers of his command destroyed the idol-temples of the province and was put to death for it by the governor Maximian, together with an immense company — the tribunes Stephen and John, a long roll of named soldiers, the women Marciana, Susanna and Palladia, the infants Kyriakos and Christian, the Egyptian Serapion, and the converted sorcerer Callinicus. The transmitted number of those who suffered with him is 1,218, though some notices give figures as high as eleven thousand. The company is commemorated with the Antiochene stylite on May 24.

The commander in Galatia

The passion places Meletius in the province of Galatia, in the interior of Asia Minor, in the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161), holding the rank of stratelates — a general officer, the same title borne by Theodore Stratelates and by Sabbas Stratelates. He was a Christian, and prayed against the idolatry of the province he governed in arms.

The narrative of what followed has the shape of a temple-destruction legend. The demons of the pagan shrines, the account says, entered into the dogs of the district, which fell to attacking and troubling the people; Meletius and his soldiers destroyed the maddened animals, and then turned upon the temples themselves and threw them down. The point of the story is the same in every telling: the idols were shown to have no power to protect even their own precincts, and the soldiers of Christ demolished them.

Martyrdom

Meletius was arrested and brought before the governor Maximian, who commanded him to sacrifice. He refused, confessed Christ, and was tortured to death. With him — and this is the striking feature of the commemoration — a very large company suffered. The synaxarion names the tribunes Stephen and John; among the soldiers Faustus, Festus, Marcellus, Theodore, Meletius, Sergius, Marcellinus, Felix, Photinus, Theodoriscus, Mercurius and Didymus; among the women Marciana, Susanna and Palladia; and two infants, Kyriakos and Christian, killed with their mothers. The account adds Serapion, an Egyptian who witnessed these sufferings, was imprisoned for confessing Christ, and — the tradition says — was consecrated bishop by an angel in his cell; and Callinicus, a sorcerer who was converted by what he saw and perished with the rest. The total transmitted is 1,218, and the martyrs are honoured as a single company.

Veneration

The commemoration belongs to the old stratum of the Constantinopolitan synaxarion and is carried into all the Byzantine calendars for May 24, where it stands beside the far more fully documented memory of Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain. No shrine, translation of relics or proper liturgical office of Meletius is attested in the sources available for this entry, and the company survives chiefly as a name-roll — which is, however, precisely the form in which the Church has always kept the memory of the great anonymous multitudes of the martyrs.

Feast and commemoration

May 24 (church date; New Calendar civil May 24, Old Calendar civil June 6). The company is commemorated in the Byzantine rite on this day together with St Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain, whose office occupies the propers; the martyrs are kept at the synaxarion reading, without a proper canon in the ordinary Menaion usage.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of martyrs)

Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions save our souls.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

The company is painted as a martyric multitude: Meletius in the centre as a soldier-saint in the military type — cuirass, cloak, sometimes shield and spear, but holding the martyr's cross rather than a drawn sword — flanked by his two tribunes, with ranks of soldiers behind, and in the foreground the three women and the two infants who suffered with them. Where the group appears in a menologion for May it is normally reduced to a single scene of beheading before a seated governor. No pre-1900 icon of Meletius Stratelates and his companions has been located for this collection; a search of the openly licensed image collections returned nothing for him at all, and images of the far better known Theodore Stratelates must not be borrowed for him.

Disputed questions

  • Historicity and date. A persecution in Galatia on this scale under Antoninus Pius is not attested in any contemporary source, and the reign of that emperor is not otherwise remembered for a general assault on the Christians of Asia Minor. The named governor "Maximian" is a suspiciously imperial name for a second-century provincial official. The passion is therefore usually judged a late and largely legendary composition, perhaps assembling under one commander the memory of several groups of soldier-martyrs. This entry reports the tradition as the Church transmits it, without asserting the second-century framework as history.
  • The number. 1,218 is the figure of the synaxarion; some notices give eleven thousand. Numbers of this kind in the martyrologies are conventional rather than statistical.
  • The roll of names. The lists vary between manuscripts and between modern calendars in spelling, order and inclusion — some drop Serapion and Callinicus, others count them among the 1,218 rather than beside them. The names above follow the fuller synaxarial roll; the variance is real and is not resolved here.
  • Not to be confused with Meletius of Antioch, the fourth-century archbishop and confessor (February 12), nor with Meletios Galesiotes the confessor (†1286); the name is common and the three are frequently run together in indexes. Note also that a soldier named Meletius is listed among this Meletius's own companions.

Sources

  1. Synaxarion of Constantinople, May 24 — the passion of Meletius the General and those with him; the roll of names and the number 1,218.
  2. Menaion for May 24 (Greek) — the commemoration as kept with the office of St Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain.
  3. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, May 24 — Martyr Meletius Stratelates who suffered in Galatia and those with him (consulted for the calendar data, the roll of names, and the variant figure of eleven thousand).