Neophytus, Gaius and Gaianus
The Holy Martyrs Neophytus, Gaius and Gaianus
Martyr
Commemorated 5 May — Perfected by the sword
Neophytus, Gaius and Gaianus are three martyrs of whom the Greek synaxarion for May 5 preserves a single line: that they were perfected by the sword. Nothing is transmitted of their country, their persecutor, their date, or the relation between them. The one further notice attached to their memory is topographical and belongs to Constantinople: their synaxis was kept in the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian "in the quarter of Dareios", which indicates a real and located cult in the imperial city, however completely their story has been lost.
The whole of the record is the synaxarial notice — Οἱ ἅγιοι Μάρτυρες Νεόφυτος, Γάϊος καὶ Γαϊανὸς ξίφει τελειοῦνται, "the holy martyrs Neophytus, Gaius and Gaianus were perfected by the sword" — together with the accompanying distich of the Synaxarion, which turns on the number three: three martyrs manfully received death for the sake of the Holy Trinity. This epigrammatic pairing of the three names with the three Persons is the entire literary content of their commemoration, and there is no passion, no Acts, and no legend behind it.
Two negative observations are worth making, since padding is not permitted where the record is thin. First, the names are of different types: Neophytus ("newly-planted," the term for the newly baptised) is a common martyr-name of the Greek East; Gaius is Latin and among the commonest names in the empire; Gaianus is its derivative. Nothing in the names permits an inference about their origin, and the pairing of Gaius with Gaianus may be no more than the accident of two similar names standing together in a list. Second, no persecution is named, which in the Constantinopolitan synaxarion usually means that the compiler had before him only a name-entry from a church's own commemoration list.
Veneration
The notice that their synaxis was celebrated at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian ἐν τοῖς Δαρείου — "in the [buildings] of Dareios," a quarter of Constantinople named from a private founder, as many were — is the kind of detail that comes from the Typikon of the Great Church rather than from a passion, and is good evidence that these three had a stated liturgical memory at a named shrine in the capital. Where their relics lay, and why they were kept at that particular Anargyroi church, is not recorded.
Feast and commemoration
May 5 (church date; Old Calendar civil May 18). The commemoration is Greek, carried in the synaxaria after the Great-Martyr Irene, whose day May 5 principally is; the Slavic menaia do not keep them. They have no proper service, and the day's hymnody belongs to Irene.
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
No icon of Neophytus, Gaius and Gaianus has been identified, and none is likely: saints with no transmitted passion are rarely painted individually. They would be shown, as the name-entries of the synaxaria generally are in painted menaion icons, as three martyrs standing together in tunic and mantle, each holding the cross of witness — the youngest beardless — in the May leaf of the year. Images labelled simply "St Neophytus" belong to the child-martyr of Nicaea (January 21) or to Neophytos the Recluse of Cyprus and must not be used here.
Disputed questions
- Their date and place are simply unknown, and are here left unstated rather than supplied by conjecture; the entry indexes under date not transmitted. Death by the sword and the Constantinopolitan synaxis are compatible with any of the persecutions from the second to the early fourth century, but nothing narrows it.
- Possibly the same company as the martyrs of August 11. The Greek synaxarion for August 11 commemorates Neophytus, Zeno, Gaius, Mark, Macarius and Gaianus, perfected by fire, with their synaxis likewise at a church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. Three of those six names are these three, in this order, and the stational church is the same; only the manner of death differs. Whether the May 5 entry is an excerpt of the August company, the August entry an expansion of these three, or the two are genuinely distinct companies venerated at the same shrine, no source consulted decides. The repository keeps both entries, as the calendar does, and cross-references them in each direction.
- Not to be confused with the better-attested Neophytoi — the child-martyr Neophytus of Nicaea (January 21) and Neophytos the Recluse of Cyprus (January 24) — nor Gaius with the Apostle Gaius of the Seventy or with Pope Gaius of Rome. The three of May 5 are known only as a company.