Patermuthius, Coprius and Alexander
The Holy Venerable Martyrs Patermuthius and Coprius, and the Holy Martyr Alexander the Soldier
Venerable Martyr · Martyr · Priest · d. c. 361–363, in Egypt, under Julian the Apostate
Commemorated 9 July — Martyrdom under Julian the Apostate — the day of the Slavonic and American calendars, 17 December — The day of the received Greek Menaion and of the Synaxaristes of Nikodemos
Three Egyptians who suffered under Julian the Apostate (361–363): Patermuthius, in his youth the captain of a band of robbers, who repented, was baptised, went into the desert and gave the rest of his life to nursing the sick and burying the dead; Coprius, the priest who was his disciple and the eyewitness who wrote down his deeds — the man who walked unhurt into a fire to confound a Manichaean; and Alexander, a soldier of the guard who, watching Coprius tortured, confessed Christ on the spot and was burnt alive. Coprius, deceived by the emperor's plea that he too had once served Christ, denied the faith and then, brought to himself by his elder's tears, confessed it again and died for it. Patermuthius and Coprius were beheaded. Their memory is kept on July 9 in the Slavonic and American calendars and on December 17 in the received Greek books.
The robber who became a monk
Patermuthius — the name is Egyptian, "he of the goddess Mut," and belongs to the same stratum of Coptic monastic names as Paphnutius and Pachomius — was, the account says, a pagan in his youth and the head of a band of robbers, notorious in his district; some transmissions add that he plundered graves and the houses of virgins. He was converted, baptised, and withdrew into the desert, and the whole force of the man went over into the new life. He is remembered above all for two labours which the Egyptian tradition prized in an ascetic more than austerities: the care of the sick and the burial of the dead. He went where there was sickness and where there was no one to bury, and he did this for the rest of his life. For that love of hard and unregarded work, the account says, God gave him the gift of wonderworking.
Coprius, the disciple and the witness
Coprius — in Greek Kopris, a name given to foundlings taken up from the dunghill — was a priest and Patermuthius's disciple, and the two are always named together. He was the eyewitness of his elder's life and the man who wrote it down. The chain of transmission is unusually well marked in the tradition: Coprius told what he had seen to the presbyter Rufinus, Rufinus passed it to Palladius, bishop of Hellenopolis, and Palladius set it in the Lausiac History, the great collection of Egyptian monastic lives made for the chamberlain Lausus about 420. It is a rare case of a synaxarion notice naming its own sources.
The episode that fixed Coprius in the memory of the Church is his encounter with a Manichaean teacher. Disputing in public and finding that he could not prevail against the man's arguments, Coprius proposed that a great fire be kindled and that the two of them walk into it together, and let the Lord decide which faith was true. The Manichaean would not go in first; Coprius went in, stood in the middle of the flames, and came out unharmed. The crowd, convinced, threw the heretic into the fire; he leapt out scorched and tried to run, and they caught him and threw him back. It was Coprius who stopped them and let the man go — the detail on which the whole story turns, and the reason it was worth preserving.
Julian, the denial, and the martyrdom
When the emperor Julian — raised a Christian, and now setting himself to restore the old gods — heard of the Egyptian hermits, he had them brought before him and undertook to win them to paganism by persuasion rather than force. He told them that he too had once served Christ and had learned by experience that salvation was to be had only from the ancient gods. Coprius was taken in by this, and denied Christ.
It was the prayers and the tears of his elder that recovered him. Patermuthius wept for him until he understood what he had done; he repented, stood forward again, and confessed himself a Christian. The emperor, enraged at being cheated of a convert, gave orders that Coprius be tortured, and Patermuthius stood by exhorting him to endure. Among the soldiers detailed to the work was one named Alexander, who, watching what a man could suffer for Christ, believed; he confessed his faith and was sentenced to be burned alive. Patermuthius and Coprius were beheaded with the sword. The years are those of Julian's reign, 361 to 363.
Feast and commemoration
July 9 (church date; New Calendar civil July 9, Old Calendar civil July 22) in the Russian and American calendars, where they are kept with Pancratius of Taormina, Cyril of Gortyna and Theodore of Edessa; December 17 in the received Greek books, where they stand with the Prophet Daniel and the Three Holy Youths. No proper office of theirs is transmitted; the commons of martyrs and of monastic martyrs are used.
Hymns
Apolytikion — 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.
Kontakion — Tone 2
The robber became a physician of the sick and a burier of the dead, and the fire had no power upon his disciple; and a soldier, beholding their endurance, was himself enrolled in the ranks of the martyrs. Wherefore we honour Patermuthius with Coprius and Alexander, and glorify Christ who crowned them.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The three are painted as a group and in their distinct states of life: Patermuthius as an aged monk in the schema, dark-robed and long-bearded, holding the cross of the martyrs; Coprius as a priest-monk, in the phelonion with the epitrachelion showing, likewise with the cross; and Alexander as a young beardless soldier in tunic and mantle — sometimes in armour — a martyr's cross in his hand. Where a narrative scene is given it is almost always the ordeal by fire: Coprius standing untouched in the flames while the Manichaean recoils, which is the one episode of the group that painters have found worth telling. No pre-1900 image of the three has been located for this repository. Their Greek commemoration falls on December 17, within the span of the Menologion of Basil II (September to February), but no securely identified miniature of them in that manuscript has been found.
Disputed questions
- The martyrs and the ascetics. The Egyptian monastic corpora — the Lausiac History of Palladius and the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto translated by Rufinus — know a Patermuthius and a Copres among the fathers of the Thebaid, and describe them reposing in peace at a great age, not under sentence. The Byzantine synaxaria, drawing on the same material, transmit them as martyrs under Julian; and some calendars, including OrthodoxWiki's composite listing for this day, in effect enter them twice, once as venerable ascetics and once as martyrs. The likeliest account is that a single Egyptian tradition has bifurcated, and that the martyrdom is a hagiographical development of the confessors' resistance to Julian's restoration. Both branches are recorded here; the martyrdom is the form in which the Church commemorates them, and the ascetic career is not thereby denied.
- The day. The received Greek books — the Menaion and the Synaxaristes of Nikodemos the Hagiorite — keep Patermuthius, Coprius and Alexander on December 17, and the Greek synaxaristic tradition explicitly notes that their memory is entered on July 9 superfluously (περιττῶς), by some compilers only. The Slavonic and American calendars nonetheless keep July 9, and that is the day on which this entry is written. Both are recorded in the entry's record and neither is suppressed.
- Not to be confused with Coprius of Palestine (September 24, †c. 530), the disciple of Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch — a wholly different man of a later century and another country, whose name is the same common Greek Kopris. Nor should Alexander the soldier of this day be confused with the many other soldier-martyrs named Alexander in the calendar; nothing is transmitted of him but his name, his profession, and the manner of his death.