Parmenas the Deacon
The Holy Apostle Parmenas the Deacon, of the Seventy
Apostle · Apostle of the Seventy · Deacon · Martyr · d. 1st or early 2nd century, in Macedonia
Commemorated 4 January — Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles, 28 July — Synaxis of the deacons Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon and Parmenas
Parmenas was the last-named but one of the seven deacons whom the Apostles ordained at Jerusalem (Acts 6:1–6), and is numbered among the Seventy Apostles. Beyond that verse the tradition transmits very little: that he preached Christ through Macedonia, and that he died there — in the account followed by the Greek synaxaria, worn out by sickness and labour before the eyes of the Apostles themselves; in the account followed by the Latin martyrologies and by much modern Orthodox usage, as a martyr under the emperor Trajan. He is commemorated on July 28 with his fellow deacons Prochorus, Nicanor and Timon.
One of the seven
The whole documented life of Parmenas is a single verse. When the Greek-speaking believers of Jerusalem complained that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution, the Twelve directed the community to choose seven men full of the Spirit and of wisdom for that ministry, and the seven set before them — approved by the whole multitude, prayed over, and ordained by the laying on of the Apostles' hands — were Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas the proselyte of Antioch (Acts 6:5–6). The name Παρμενᾶς is a familiar Greek hypocoristic — a shortened form of Parmenides or Parmenion — and it is one of the small pieces of evidence that all seven were Hellenists, Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora, chosen precisely because the grievance had arisen among their own people.
Preaching in Macedonia
The apostolic catalogues transmitted under the names of Hippolytus and of Dorotheus send Parmenas out of Jerusalem to Macedonia — the province evangelised in the same generation by Paul and Silas, with its churches at Philippi, Thessalonica and Beroea. Some recensions of the lists instead give him Soli (in Cilicia, or in Cyprus, according to which Soli is meant) as his see. Nothing survives of what he did there. The synaxarion notice says only that he proclaimed Christ throughout the region and that his labour was great.
Repose or martyrdom
Two endings are transmitted, and they are hard to reconcile.
The older Greek notice says that Parmenas died of illness — the word used is that of a wasting sickness — and that he died at Jerusalem in the presence of the Apostles, who buried him with honour. This is the reading that places his death very early, in the apostolic decades themselves, and it is the reason a strand of the tradition declines to call him a martyr at all.
The Latin martyrologies, followed by the Roman Martyrology and by a good deal of later Orthodox usage, put his death at Philippi in Macedonia under Trajan (98–117) — that is, some seventy years later — and make it a martyrdom. Modern Orthodox notices, including the Orthodox Church in America's, print both: that he died of illness, and that "some sources" have him suffering martyrdom under Trajan.
There is no way to decide between them on the transmitted evidence. This entry records the disagreement and carries martyr in its classification because that is the reading of the service books and of the calendars that name him, while flagging the older tradition of a peaceful death in the section below.
Feast and commemoration
July 28 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 10), in the joint synaxis of the four deacons Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon and Parmenas, in which Parmenas is named last. The grouping rests on the shared ordination of Acts 6, not on a shared death: the tradition places the four deaths in Jerusalem, Antioch, Bostra and Macedonia respectively, and across a span of decades. Parmenas is kept again on January 4 in the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on January 23. Universal usage.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 3 (common of the holy apostles)
O holy Apostles, intercede with the merciful God, that he may grant to our souls the forgiveness of our sins.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Parmenas is depicted in the settled type of the seven deacons: a young or middle-aged man in the deacon's sticharion, the orarion crossing his left shoulder, a censer raised in the right hand and a small casket or artophorion held in the veiled left — the pattern given to the whole company by Stephen, and repeated on the lowest register of sanctuary walls in Byzantine, Serbian and Russian churches, where the ranks of deacons stand as though serving the altar itself. He appears in the composite icon of the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles, ranged with the rest in rows. Where his death is shown at all, it is as a repose rather than a passion, in keeping with the older Greek notice. No pre-1900 image of Parmenas alone, securely identified by inscription, has been located for this collection; the Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for minor saints, covers only September to February and cannot serve a July commemoration.
Disputed questions
- Death by sickness or by martyrdom? See above. The two accounts differ not only in manner but by three generations in date. A Parmenas who died before the Apostles' eyes cannot also have been killed under Trajan; either the Macedonian mission belongs to someone else, or the Jerusalem death-notice is a doublet drawn from the Acts 6 context. Both possibilities have been canvassed and neither can be demonstrated.
- Macedonia or Soli? The see-lists disagree. As with the rest of the Seventy, the assignments are late and schematic, and no weight should be put on any of them individually.
- Not to be confused with the Parmenas of the Greek onomastic record generally: the name was common in Macedonia and Asia Minor, and inscriptions bearing it have no connection with the deacon.