Mnemonios of Amathus

Our Father among the Saints Mnemonios, Bishop of Amathus in Cyprus

Bishop · d. before 403, at Amathus in Cyprus

Commemorated 16 June — Kept with his successor Tychon of Amathus

Mnemonios was bishop of Amathus in Cyprus in the second half of the fourth century, the predecessor of Tychon of Amathus, whom he ordained deacon. He is commemorated on June 16, the day of his successor, and everything known of him is contained in that successor's Life: the Greek books state that Mnemonios ordained Tychon to the diaconate and that Tychon was chosen to his see on his death. Nothing else of his life, his deeds or the manner of his repose has come down.

Amathus, on the south coast of Cyprus a few miles east of the modern Limassol, was an ancient city with a stubborn pagan cult of Aphrodite and, by the fourth century, a bishopric of the autocephalous Church of Cyprus. Mnemonios held that see in the generation of Epiphanius of Constantia (†403), the metropolitan of the island. Under him a young man of the city named Tychon — already known for wonders, already enrolled among the readers of the church — was ordained deacon; and when Mnemonios died the clergy and people of Amathus chose Tychon to succeed him, Epiphanius performing the consecration. Since Epiphanius reposed in 403, Mnemonios's own death falls before that year.

That is the whole of the record. The Greek synaxarial notice for June 16 says of him only that he ordained St Tychon deacon and adds, in so many words, that no other information about his life survives; his memory is preserved in the Church because it is attached to Tychon's. He is nowhere styled a martyr, and the calendars keep him simply as a holy hierarch of Cyprus.

Feast and commemoration

June 16 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 29), with St Tychon his successor, whose service the day carries. Greek and Cypriot usage; not in the Russian enumeration of the day.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)

The truth of thy deeds has shown thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of self-restraint; therefore thou hast gained the heights by humility and riches by poverty, O Father and hierarch Mnemonios. Intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Iconography

Mnemonios has no independent iconographic type. Where he is painted at all — in Cypriot churches, and in menologion cycles for June — he appears as a hierarch of the fourth century: an elder bishop in phelonion and omophorion, blessing or holding the Gospel, and in composition he is placed beside Tychon, the two bishops of Amathus together, sometimes with Tychon receiving ordination at his hands. No pre-1900 image identified as Mnemonios has been located for this collection.

Disputed questions

A saint known only through another. Mnemonios is not independently attested — not in the conciliar subscription lists, not in Epiphanius, not in any surviving Cypriot document — and stands in the calendar solely on the authority of the Life of St Tychon. His commemoration is therefore of the same kind as those of the many synaxarial bishops whose names were kept because a famous disciple remembered them. This is recorded here rather than smoothed over: the entry claims for him what the tradition claims, and no more.
The Slavonic and Greek usage differ. The Greek books (and the Cypriot calendar) keep Mnemonios on June 16 alongside Tychon; the Slavonic and Russian books, which fill the day with the three monastic Tikhons, generally omit him. Neither usage disputes the other; the divergence is one of local enumeration.