Nicander of Egypt
The Holy Martyr Nicander the Physician, of Egypt
Martyr · d. c. 302, in Egypt
Commemorated 15 March — Martyrdom in Egypt under Diocletian
Nicander (†c. 302) was a Christian of Egypt — remembered in the tradition as a physician — who suffered martyrdom in the Great Persecution under Diocletian. His crime, in the eyes of the persecutors, was an act of mercy: he sought out the bodies of the martyrs who had been put to death and left unburied, and gave them honourable burial, and he ministered to the confessors held in prison. Seized in the very act of caring for the dead, he refused to renounce Christ and was put to death — flayed alive, the synaxarion says. He is commemorated on March 15.
Nicander belongs to the Egyptian Church in the terrible last years of the pagan persecutions, when — under Diocletian and his caesars — Christians were being executed in great numbers and their bodies deliberately left exposed, unburied and guarded, that the faithful might not honour them. Against that cruelty Nicander set a quiet and dangerous charity. The tradition remembers him as a physician, a man whose calling was the care of the body; and he turned that care to the service of the persecuted Church, visiting and tending the Christians shut up in prison and, above all, gathering the remains of the martyrs — recovering their bodies by night, wrapping them, and burying them with reverence, at the risk of his own life.
He was at last caught in the act, discovered as he carried away the bodies of the slain. Brought before the authorities and charged, he confessed himself a Christian and would not deny his Lord. The synaxarion records that he was condemned to a savage death: he was flayed — his skin stripped from him "like a lamb," in the phrase of the tradition — and so gave up his soul, himself joining the martyrs whose bodies he had honoured. His repose is placed about the year 302, within the persecution that opened in 303 or in the executions of Egypt that ran alongside it.
Beyond this the record is thin; Nicander is known from the synaxarion notice of his day and the hymns that keep his memory, and his story is honoured for what it holds whole — the martyrdom of a man killed for burying the dead.
Feast and commemoration
March 15 (church date; New Calendar civil March 15; Old Calendar civil March 28), kept across the Greek, Slavic and Antiochian calendars as the memory of "the holy martyr Nicander." The feast falls within Great Lent, so that on a weekday no proper Liturgy is served and his memory is kept with the Lenten office. No proper service is appointed; the common of a martyr supplies the office.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a martyr)
Thy martyr, O Lord, in his courageous contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions, O Christ God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Nicander is depicted in the type of a youthful or middle-aged martyr — in tunic and mantle, holding the martyr's cross — or, where his passion is shown, at the moment of his flaying. Because his commemoration falls in March, he is absent from the illuminated menologia of the first half of the year, and no pre-modern image proper to him has been identified and verified for storage; a suitable public-domain icon is wanting.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Nicander, bishop of Myra, the hieromartyr of the apostolic age kept with Hermas the presbyter on November 4 — a wholly different saint of a different century and country. This Nicander is the layman-physician of Egypt, martyred for burying the dead; that Nicander is the first-century bishop of Myra in Lycia. The calendars keep them on different days, and the shared name is their only point of contact.
- Not to be confused, more dangerously, with the Nicander of the company of ten martyrs of Egypt kept on June 5 — Marcian, Nicander, Hyperechius and their companions, who suffered under Maximian a few years later than this Nicander and in the same country. The two Egyptian Nicanders are distinct: this one is the physician who buried the bodies of the martyrs and was flayed for it, commemorated alone on March 15; that one is a member of a company of ten dragged and beheaded together, commemorated with them on June 5.