Nine Martyrs of Perge
The Holy Nine Martyrs of Perge in Pamphylia — Leontius, Attius, Alexander, Cindeus, Mnesitheus, Cyriacus, Mineon, Catanus and Eucleus
Martyr · d. under Diocletian (284–305)
Commemorated 1 August — Beheading at Perge after the destruction of the idols of Artemis
Nine countrymen of Perge in Pamphylia — Leontius, Attius, Alexander, Cindeus, Mnesitheus, Cyriacus, Mineon, Catanus and Eucleus — eight of them farmers and one, Mineon, a carpenter, who under Diocletian agreed among themselves one evening to confess Christ, went to the temple of Artemis that was the pride of their city, and broke its idols in pieces. Arrested and interrogated, they were burned in the sides, scraped with iron, blinded with torches and shut up without food; the beasts loosed upon them would not touch them; and after a storm of thunder and lightning and a voice heard from heaven, the governor had them beheaded. They are one of the very few martyr companies of the calendar whose trades are remembered, and they went to their death by their own deliberate choice.
Perge and the goddess
Perge (Πέργη), on the river Cestrus a few miles inland from the southern coast of Asia Minor, was one of the great cities of Pamphylia — a Hellenistic foundation grown rich under Rome, with colonnaded streets, baths and a theatre whose ruins still stand. Its fame rested on the sanctuary of Artemis Pergaia, "Artemis of Perge," whose temple stood on the acropolis above the city and whose cult was famous throughout Asia Minor; the goddess appears on the city's coinage for centuries, and the shrine drew pilgrims and their money from the whole province. To attack that temple was not merely an act of piety against idols; it was an assault on the city's identity and on its livelihood. Perge already had its Christian memory — the Apostle Paul landed there on his first journey, and the city had given the Church the martyr Theodore of Perge and his mother Philippa in the second century — but the goddess was still the mistress of the place when these nine came to their decision.
The nine
The account, transmitted through the synaxaria, is unusually concrete about who they were. There were nine of them, ordinary men of the countryside about the city: eight farmers, and one, Mineon, a carpenter. The names are given as Leontius, Attius, Alexander, Cindeus, Mnesitheus, Cyriacus, Mineon, Catanus and Eucleus, with the usual variation between the Greek and Slavonic forms (Attos, Kindeos, Menaeus, Katounos, Eukles). Nothing is transmitted of their families, their ages, or how long they had been Christians.
What is transmitted is the decision. One evening they agreed together to suffer for Christ — the phrase in the sources is deliberate and collective, an agreement made among themselves before anything had been done to them — and acting on it they went up to the temple of Artemis and destroyed the idols in it. This is the rarer kind of martyrdom: not confession under arrest, but a public and provocative act of iconoclasm that made arrest certain. The Church has always been careful about such cases — the canons discourage volunteering for martyrdom, and several councils rebuked those who sought it — and the synaxarion does not moralise about it either way; it records what they did.
Passion
Taken and brought before the governor, they were questioned and refused to sacrifice. The tortures the sources record follow the standard escalation of the Great Persecution, applied to all nine together: their sides were burned with fire; their flesh was scraped with iron claws; lighted torches were held to their eyes, blinding them; and they were then thrown into prison and left without food or water to die of starvation. When this did not kill them, they were exposed to wild beasts that had been kept unfed for the purpose — and the beasts, coming into the arena, did them no harm but lay still. At this, the accounts relate, there came thunder and lightning and a great rain, and a voice from heaven was heard calling them; the crowd was thrown into confusion. The governor, defeated in every attempt to break them and unwilling to prolong a spectacle that was converting his audience, ordered them beheaded, and so they were perfected together, as they had agreed together.
The Christians of Perge buried them, and their memory passed into the synaxaria of Constantinople under August 1, where it has stayed. No relics, no shrine and no subsequent miracles are recorded of them: what survives is the passion, and the roll of nine names with two trades attached.
Feast and commemoration
August 1 (church date; New Calendar civil August 1, Old Calendar civil August 14), on the first day of the Dormition Fast. Their commemoration is carried by the Greek and Slavonic books alike and by the OCA and Greek calendars, but it is a bare notice with no proper service: the day belongs to the Procession of the Precious Cross and to the Seven Maccabee Martyrs, and the nine are commemorated at the sixth ode of the canon and in the synaxarion reading. The Greek Menaion nevertheless appoints them their own Epistle and Gospel where they are kept with a Liturgy of their own (Hebrews 2:11–18; John 5:1–4).
Hymns
Apolytikion — 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 save our souls, O Christ God.
Appointed readings
Epistle — Hebrews 2:11–18
11For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. 13And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me. 14Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 16For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. 17Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. 18For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.
Gospel — John 5:1–4
1After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. 3In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. 4For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
Iconography
The nine are painted as a company, in the manner the menologia use for numbered companies of martyrs: a close rank of standing figures of varying ages, beardless and bearded together, in tunic and mantle, each holding the small cross of martyrdom, with the inscription giving the number and the place — ΟΙ ΑΓΙΟΙ ΕΝΝΕΑ ΜΑΡΤΥΡΕΣ ΟΙ ΕΝ ΠΕΡΓΗ. Their passion, where it is shown at all, is represented by the beheading of the group, in the compressed form the menologion miniatures use: the martyrs kneeling in a row and the executioner with the raised sword. Because their commemoration falls in August, the Menologion of Basil II — which covers only the half-year from September to February — contains no miniature of them, and no other early cycle known to this collection does either. Their trades, unusually well remembered in the text, have left no mark on the iconography: neither the farmer's tools nor Mineon's carpentry appear.
No pre-1900 image of these martyrs has been located for this collection; a search of Wikimedia Commons returned nothing under any form of their names.
Disputed questions
- Third century or fourth? The calendars generally head them "3rd century," while the narrative sources place them "in the reign of Diocletian (284–305)." Diocletian's reign straddles the centuries, and the persecution for which he is remembered — the Great Persecution — belongs to 303–305, which would put the martyrdom in the fourth century. This entry indexes them under the third century, following the printed calendars, and records the disagreement here: a date in the first years of the fourth century is at least as likely.
- The forms of the names. All nine names vary between the Greek and the Slavonic traditions and between English renderings of each. The most divergent are Attius/Attos, Cindeus/Kindeos, Mineon/Menaeus/Minaeus, Catanus/Katounos and Eucleus/Eukles. The list above follows the commonest English calendar forms and gives the alternatives in the frontmatter; no critical text of the passion exists against which to settle them.
- Not to be confused with the martyrs of Perge of April 21 — Theodore of Perge, his mother Philippa and their companions Dioscorus, Socrates and Dionysius, who suffered in the same city under Antoninus Pius, more than a century earlier. The two companies share only the place.