Neophytus, Zeno and Companions

The Holy Martyrs Neophytus, Zeno, Gaius, Mark, Macarius and Gaianus, who were perfected by fire

Martyr · d. no year transmitted

Commemorated 11 August — Perfected by fire; their synaxis at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian

Six martyrs — Neophytus, Zeno, Gaius, Mark, Macarius and Gaianus — stand in the Greek synaxarion for August 11 under a single line: they were perfected by fire. Neither country, nor persecutor, nor year, nor the relation between them is transmitted. One further notice attaches to their memory, and it is topographical and Constantinopolitan: their synaxis was kept in the church of the Holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian. That detail is the whole of their history and also the key to the chief question about them, since three of the six names — Neophytus, Gaius and Gaianus — stand together again on May 5, likewise with a synaxis at a church of Cosmas and Damian, and there perfected not by fire but by the sword.

The notice

The entire transmitted record is the synaxarial line: Οἱ ἅγιοι Νεόφυτος, Ζήνων, Γάϊος, Μᾶρκος, Μακάριος καὶ Γαϊανὸς πυρὶ τελειοῦνται — "the holy martyrs Neophytus, Zeno, Gaius, Mark, Macarius and Gaianus were perfected by fire" — together with the rubric appointing the synaxis of their memory at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian.

Two things can be read out of it with confidence. The first is the manner of death: burning alive, which in the Roman legal repertory belonged to the summa supplicia, reserved for the lowest ranks, for slaves, and for crimes held to be against the state and its gods. A group of six burned together suggests a single sentence on a single occasion, which is what the synaxarion means by naming them in one breath. The second is the cult: a synaxis at a named church in the imperial city is not a literary flourish but a liturgical fact, an annual gathering at a place where these martyrs were honoured. Whatever has been lost of their passion, a real and located veneration stood behind the entry.

Six names

The names are ordinary Greek and Roman ones of the eastern provinces. Neophytos, "newly planted," is a Christian name in the strict sense, a baptismal name; Zenon and Gaios are common everywhere; Markos and Makarios are of the commonest; Gaianos is a derivative of Gaius, and its standing next to Gaius in the list may mean kinship, or may be the accident that generated the pairing in the first place. Nothing in the group of names localises them.

The church of the Unmercenaries

Constantinople had several churches of Cosmas and Damian, of which the most famous was that at the Kosmidion outside the walls by the Golden Horn, and another stood ἐν τοῖς Δαρείου, "in the quarter of Dareios." The synaxaria distribute a fair number of otherwise unknown martyrs among these churches, which is how minor commemorations survived at all: a company of martyrs whose passion had been forgotten kept its day because a congregation kept assembling at the place where their relics were.

Feast and commemoration

August 11 (church date; New Calendar civil August 11, Old Calendar civil August 24), within the afterfeast of the Transfiguration and the Dormition Fast (August 1–14).

The commemoration is Greek in transmission: it stands in the Greek synaxaria and in the Greek-derived English lists, and is absent from the Slavonic and Russian calendars for the day, which give August 11 to Euplus, Susanna, and the Kievan saints. No proper service is appointed; where the martyrs are commemorated liturgically the common of several martyrs is sung with their names, the day's propers belonging to the Transfiguration.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of several 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, O Christ God, save our souls.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

There is no proper iconography of these six. In a menologion rank they would receive the calendar's default formula for a company of unspecified martyrs: a row of standing figures, varied only by age and the cut of a beard, in tunic and mantle, each holding the cross of confession, with the names written above them. The one attribute their notice would license is the fire, and where a painter renders the manner of death the scene is the standard one for martyrdom by burning — the condemned standing upright and unharmed in the flames, hands raised in prayer, in the posture the Three Children in the furnace gave to Christian art and which every later martyrdom by fire borrows.

No pre-1900 image of them has been identified for this collection, and none is likely to exist. The Menologion of Basil II, the first resort for minor saints of the fixed year, covers only September to February.

Disputed questions

A doublet of the martyrs of May 5? This is the substantial question. The Greek synaxarion for May 5 commemorates Neophytus, Gaius and Gaianus, three martyrs of whom nothing is recorded except that they were perfected by the sword, and whose synaxis was kept at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in the quarter of Dareios. The August 11 entry shares three of its six names, in the same order, and the same stational church. The coincidence is too close to be dismissed. Three explanations are possible:
- The May 5 notice is an excerpt of the August 11 company, three names of six having dropped out in one branch of the tradition, with the manner of death (sword for fire) also altered — the sort of corruption to which the synaxaria are notoriously liable.
- The August 11 notice is an expansion, three further names having been drawn in from a neighbouring entry and attached to the original three.
- They are genuinely two companies venerated at the same church, which in a city with many martyrs and few churches is not improbable, and the repetition of three common names is coincidence.
No source consulted decides between them. This repository follows the calendar, which keeps both entries, and cross-references them in each direction; but the reader should know that these may well be one company of martyrs counted twice.
No date, no place. Neither notice gives a persecution, a reign, or a province. The century field is therefore omitted and the entry indexes under the unknown century, in accordance with the repository's policy of an honest short life where the record is a single line.
Gaius the martyr is not to be confused with Gaius, bishop of Rome, who is commemorated on this same August 11 among the companions of Susanna of Rome — a coincidence of name and day only.