Narcissus of Jerusalem
Our Father among the Saints Narcissus, Bishop of Jerusalem
Bishop · Wonderworker · d. c. 216, at Jerusalem, aged about 116
Commemorated 7 August — Repose in extreme old age after twice occupying the throne of Jerusalem
Narcissus was bishop of Jerusalem at the turn of the second and third centuries — the thirtieth or thirty-first from James the Brother of the Lord — and one of the few bishops of that period of whom a contemporary record survives. Eusebius, who had access to letters in his own hand, reports that he was already about eighty when he was made bishop; that he presided with Theophilus of Caesarea over the Palestinian synod on the keeping of Pascha; that at a Paschal vigil, the oil for the lamps having failed, he had water drawn from the wells and blessed it, and it served as oil and burned; that three men swore false accusations against him, each invoking a curse upon himself, and that he chose to withdraw into the desert rather than defend himself; that the three perished exactly as they had sworn; and that he returned, was received back, and — being past a hundred — was given Alexander as coadjutor. He reposed in peace at about 116 years.
The throne of James
The church of Jerusalem — after 135 the church of the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina — counted its bishops from James the Brother of the Lord, and Narcissus stands thirtieth in that succession by one reckoning and thirty-first by another; the discrepancy is in the early part of the list, not in his own position, and the Greek notices report both figures without deciding.
Eusebius describes him as a man temperate, generous to the poor, a teacher, and inflexible in the performance of his duty, undeterred by the hostility of ill-willed men — a characterisation the later synaxarion repeats almost word for word.
He was already an old man when he came to the throne — at least eighty, on Eusebius' reckoning — and his episcopate is fixed in the last decade of the second century by his presidency, jointly with Theophilus, bishop of Caesarea, over the synod of the bishops of Palestine convened about 195 on the question of the day of Pascha; the synodical letter of that council, upholding the Sunday observance, was still extant in Eusebius' time.
The water that burned as oil
The miracle for which he is remembered belongs to the great vigil of Pascha. The deacons, Eusebius says, found that the oil had run out and there was none to fill the lamps of the church, and the whole congregation was thrown into distress. Narcissus told the men whose office it was to draw water and bring it to him. He prayed over it, and bade them pour it into the lamps; and it burned, against its nature, as though it were oil. Eusebius adds the detail that guarantees the story was still alive in his day: some of that water was kept as a relic by the faithful of Jerusalem down to his own time.
The three false witnesses
His inflexibility made him enemies. A conspiracy was got up against him, and three men came forward to swear to a charge — the nature of which Eusebius does not state — and, unable to make it credible, each bound his oath with a self-curse. The first swore that if he lied he might be destroyed by fire; the second, that he might be wasted by a foul disease; the third, that he might be struck blind.
No one believed them; but Narcissus, who had long wanted the solitary life and was weary of the affair, left the city altogether and lived for years hidden in the desert, unknown to his own church.
The three did not go unpunished. The first was burned, with his whole household, when a small spark took his house by night. The second was consumed by the disease he had named, from the sole of his foot to the crown. The third, seeing what had happened to his fellows, confessed the conspiracy publicly, and wept so long and so bitterly for what he had done that he lost his sight.
The return, and Alexander
For a long time the church of Jerusalem believed Narcissus dead, and elected successors: Dios, then Germanion, then Gordius. In the days of the third of these Narcissus reappeared, "as if risen from the dead," and the brethren, who now knew the whole truth of the calumny, called him back to the throne and would not be refused.
He was by this time far past a hundred, and — Eusebius says — could no longer discharge the ministry. So there was given to him, by a revelation in the night made to the church, a coadjutor: Alexander, already a bishop in Cappadocia, who had come to Jerusalem to pray at the holy places, and who was retained there by common consent and by the express testimony of the neighbouring bishops. The arrangement — two bishops in one see, an elder and a younger — is the earliest clear instance of a coadjutorship in the records of the Church, and Alexander's own letters, quoted by Eusebius, speak of Narcissus as still living with him at the age of one hundred and sixteen, joining in the greetings.
He reposed in peace at about that age, having occupied the throne twice and, by the Greek reckoning, for twenty-six years in all.
Feast and commemoration
August 7 (church date; New Calendar civil August 7, Old Calendar civil August 20), within the afterfeast of the Transfiguration and within the Dormition fast (August 1–14). He is kept universally, and is one of the few commemorations of the day whose history rests on a contemporary documentary record rather than on a synaxarion notice. There is no proper office; the common of a hierarch is sung. In the Church of Jerusalem he is honoured among the bishops of the mother church, in the succession from James.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
A rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of self-restraint, hath thy life shown thee forth to thy flock; through humility thou didst attain to loftiness, and through poverty to riches. O father and hierarch Narcissus, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Narcissus is painted as an aged hierarch: white-haired and long-bearded — his extreme age is the point, and painters make him the oldest face in the register — in the phelonion and crossed omophorion, blessing with the right hand and holding the jewelled Gospel in the left. His proper scene is the Paschal vigil: the bishop standing before the altar with hands raised over a vessel, deacons pouring from water-jars into the hanging lamps of the church, and the lamps alight. Where the Western tradition depicts him — as in the stained glass of Bénévent-l'Abbaye — the water-jar is likewise his attribute.
No image has been stored. The available pre-1900 depictions located are Western glass and prints rather than Orthodox panel or wall painting, and no securely inscribed Byzantine icon of this Narcissus, as distinct from the Apostle of the Seventy of the same name, has been found for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Was he a martyr? The Greek books frequently style him ἱερομάρτυς, "hieromartyr" — "Saint Narcissus the Hieromartyr, Patriarch of Jerusalem" — and the English calendars follow. The Greek synaxarion's own text, however, ends with the plain statement that he fell asleep in peace at the age of 116, and Eusebius knows nothing of a martyrdom. The two cannot both stand. This entry follows the narrative and not the title, classes him as a bishop and wonderworker, and records the "hieromartyr" styling here as an honorific that the tradition attached to a confessor who suffered calumny and exile rather than death.
- "Patriarch." Jerusalem was a suffragan see of Caesarea in Narcissus' lifetime and did not become a patriarchate until 451. The Greek usage that calls him patriarch is a retrojection of the later dignity.
- Thirtieth or thirty-first bishop: both counts are transmitted; see above.
- The feast day. The East keeps him on August 7; the West on October 29.
- Not to be confused with the Apostle Narcissus of the Seventy (Rom. 16:11), bishop of Athens, kept with Stachys, Amplias, Urban, Narcissus, Apelles and Aristobulus on October 31 and January 4. The two are separated by a century and a half.