Peregrinus and Companions of Dyrrachium
The Holy Martyrs Peregrinus, Lucian, Pompeius, Hesychius, Papias, Saturninus and Germanus, who suffered at Dyrrachium
Martyr · d. c. 98–117
Commemorated 7 July — Drowning in the Adriatic at Dyrrachium
Seven Christians of Italy — Peregrinus, Lucian, Pompeius, Hesychius, Papias, Saturninus and Germanus — fled the persecution in their own country and took refuge at Dyrrachium, the great Adriatic port of Illyricum (modern Durrës in Albania). There they saw the bishop of the city, the hieromartyr Astius, hanging crucified, and could not keep silence: they cried out publicly in praise of his endurance and confessed themselves Christians. They were seized at once, taken out to sea, and drowned. The waves carried their bodies ashore, and Christians buried them where they lay in the sand. Ninety years afterwards, the tradition says, the seven appeared to the bishop of Alexandria, asking that their relics be gathered and a church built over them — and it was done. They are commemorated on July 7, the day after their bishop in the Greek reckoning.
Refugees at Dyrrachium
The seven were natives of Italy — the names are a mixed Latin and Greek company of the kind the Adriatic ports were full of: Peregrinus ("the stranger, the pilgrim"), Saturninus, Pompeius, Lucian, and the Greek Hesychius, Papias, Germanus. Persecution had broken out where they lived, and rather than deny Christ they left, crossing the Adriatic to Dyrrachium. The city was the terminus of the Via Egnatia, the road that ran from the Adriatic to Constantinople, and a natural place for people in flight to disappear into; they seem to have intended to live there quietly.
The witness of Astius
They arrived while the bishop of the city, Astius, was suffering. He had been arrested under Trajan (98–117) by the governor Agricolaus, scourged, smeared with honey and hung upon a cross in the open air to be tormented by flies and wasps and to die by inches under the sun. The seven Italians came upon this scene. What they saw was a man enduring what they had run away from; and, the passion says, they cried aloud in the hearing of the crowd, blessing the bishop's steadfastness and glorifying the God who gave it.
That was enough. They were taken by the authorities, questioned, and confessed themselves Christians without hesitation. The governor did not multiply tortures. They were put aboard ship, carried out into the Adriatic, and thrown into the sea — a form of execution much used against Christians in the coastal cities because it destroyed the body and denied the community relics to venerate.
The bodies on the shore
The sea gave them back. The waves cast the seven bodies onto the beach, and Christians of Dyrrachium who found them buried them there, in the sand where they lay, unable to do more in a time of persecution. There the graves remained, unmarked and, in time, forgotten.
The tradition adds a striking sequel. Ninety years later the seven martyrs appeared to the bishop of Alexandria — the notices give no name — and asked that their bodies be taken up out of the sand and honourably interred, and that a church be raised over the place. The bishop, the account says, did as he was asked; and so the memory of the seven strangers was recovered and their relics were enshrined at Dyrrachium.
Feast and commemoration
July 7 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 20). The seven are kept together as one commemoration in the synaxaria, listed after Thomas of Mount Maleon and among the martyrs of the day with Evangelos of Tomis and Kyriaki of Nicomedia. They are honoured especially in Albania, where the Autocephalous Orthodox Church keeps them among the protomartyrs of Durrës together with St Astius, as the first named Christians of the Illyrian coast.
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.
Iconography
The seven are shown as a group of laymen-martyrs of varied ages — some youthful and beardless, some bearded — standing in a row in tunics and mantles, each with the small martyr's cross in the right hand, in the manner in which the synaxarial companies are painted in the menaion panels. Where the martyrdom itself is depicted, the scene is the sea: a boat, the martyrs cast overboard, and their bodies on the shore below; and in fuller narrative cycles the scene is paired with the crucifixion of St Astius, the bishop hanging on his cross with the seven strangers crying out beneath him, which is the episode that identifies them.
No pre-1900 image of this company has been located for this collection. Their commemoration falls in July, so the Menologion of Basil II — which covers only September to February — cannot supply one.
Disputed questions
- Date. The passion attaches the martyrs to Trajan (98–117), through their connection with St Astius, whose martyrdom the same sources place in that reign; this entry therefore dates them to the early second century. Several modern calendars, including the OCA's, print "third century" for them while keeping the name of Trajan — an internal contradiction inherited from the compilers, not a genuine variant tradition.
- The name Pompeius. English calendars derived from the Slavonic frequently print "Ompeius," which is a transmission error for Πομπήϊος / Pompeius; both forms are recorded here as alternate names.
- Relation to Astius. A number of the Greek and English calendars commemorate Astius on July 6 and these seven on July 7, keeping the bishop and those who confessed at the sight of him on consecutive days. This repository's entry for Astius of Dyrrachium follows the June 4 date given in the Slavonic reckoning, which is a calendar variant for the same saint, not a second person.
- Not to be confused with the other martyrs named Peregrinus: Irenaeus, Irene and Peregrinus (May 5, †c. 304), and Isaurus, Basil, Innocent, Felix, Hermias and Peregrinus (June 17, †c. 283). All three companies are groups of martyrs in which a Peregrinus is named, and all three suffered on the Greek or Illyrian side of the Adriatic; they are distinct commemorations.