Natalius the Martyr
The Holy Martyr Natalius, who was perfected by the sword
Martyr · d. no year transmitted
Commemorated 30 May — Perfected by the sword
Natalius is a martyr of the Greek synaxarion of May 30 of whom nothing at all is transmitted except his name and the manner of his death: he was perfected by the sword (ξίφει τελειοῦται). No place, no reign, no year, no interrogation and no relics are recorded. He stands in the Byzantine calendar as one of that considerable class of saints whose entire surviving memory is a name in a list — a witness that the Church kept, and keeps, the names of martyrs whose stories she has lost.
Nothing is transmitted. The Greek synaxaristes for May 30 prints the name Νατάλιος and the standing formula ξίφει τελειοῦται, "he is perfected by the sword," and the English lists that follow the Greek reproduce it as "Martyr Natalios, by the sword." There is no passion, no place of martyrdom, no persecuting emperor, no companion and no shrine.
The name itself is Latin — Natalis, "of the birthday," a name that in Christian usage came to carry the sense of the martyr's dies natalis, the day of his birth into heaven, which is what the calendar calls every martyr's feast. Whether the man bore the name in life or acquired it from the very rubric under which he was remembered cannot now be determined, and the coincidence has been remarked on by more than one editor of the synaxaria. The bare notice does, however, suggest a Latin-speaking or Latin-named Christian of the eastern empire, of the period when such names were common in the cities and in the army.
Feast and commemoration
May 30 (church date; New Calendar civil May 30, Old Calendar civil June 12). The commemoration is Greek in transmission and is absent from the Slavonic, Russian and American calendars of the day, which give May 30 to Isaac of Dalmatia. Natalius nevertheless stands second in the Greek day-lists, immediately after Isaac, and is named on the Greek calendars in use today. No proper service is appointed; where he is commemorated liturgically the common of a single martyr is sung with his name.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Natalius, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions, O Christ God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
There is no distinct iconography of Natalius, and none can be expected of a saint of whom nothing is known but a name and a sword. Where a menologion rank of May includes him he would be painted by the calendar's default formula for an unspecified martyr: a figure in tunic and mantle, most often shown young and beardless where no age is transmitted, standing frontally with the martyr's cross in the right hand and the left hand open before the breast, identified solely by the inscription Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΝΑΤΑΛΙΟΣ. No pre-1900 image of him has been identified for this collection, and the Menologion of Basil II, which supplies miniatures for saints of this kind, covers only September to February.
Disputed questions
- A name only. This entry deliberately does not supply a place, a persecution or a century. The repository's policy is that a saint known from one synaxarion line receives an honest short life and not a constructed one, and the "sword" formula of the Greek books is a bare rubric, not a narrative.
- Not to be confused with the several Western saints named Natalis or Natalia — among them the wife of the martyr Adrian of Nicomedia (August 26), whose name is the same in origin. Nor is he to be identified with any of the martyrs of the neighbouring notices of May 30: he stands in the Greek lists as a separate commemoration, not as a member of the company burned at Nicomedia.
- No century. Because no date whatever is transmitted, this entry omits the century field, and indexes under the unknown century rather than being assigned by inference to a persecution.