Philip of Heraclea
The Holy Hieromartyr Philip, Bishop of Heraclea in Thrace
Hieromartyr · Bishop · b. mid-3rd century, in Thrace — d. c. 304, burned alive at Adrianople
Commemorated 20 August — Commemorated with the martyrs of Thrace — Severus, Memnon and the thirty-seven
Philip, bishop of Heraclea (the old Perinthus) on the Thracian shore of the Propontis, is the chief name under which the Byzantine calendars gather the martyrs of Thrace commemorated on August 20. His passion belongs to the very first months of Diocletian's persecution: when the edict of 303 ordered the churches closed, the Scriptures surrendered and burned, Philip — already an old man — refused to leave his church, taught his people on the steps when the doors were sealed against them, and answered the governor that God dwells not in buildings but in the hearts of men. With his presbyter Severus and his deacon Hermes he was tried, tortured, dragged through the streets, imprisoned for months, and at last taken to Adrianople, where about the year 304 he was burned alive. In the Slavic and American calendars his name heads the company of Severus, Memnon and the thirty-seven martyrs; in the Greek books the two groups stand apart, and their relation is an old and unresolved question.
Bishop of Heraclea
Heraclea in Thrace — Perinthus under its older name — stood on the north shore of the Propontis on the great road from Constantinople to the west, and was the metropolis of the province of Europa; after the founding of Constantinople its bishop retained a memory of precedence, for the new capital had been reckoned a suffragan of Heraclea. Philip was its bishop at the end of the third century, an aged man when the persecution came, and the Passio which preserves his acts presents him as a pastor of unusual steadiness: he had, it says, long prepared his flock for what was coming, and when it came he neither fled nor allowed his clergy to flee.
The edict and the sealing of the church
The first edict of Diocletian (February 303) commanded that the churches be pulled down, the copies of the Scriptures handed over and burned, and the clergy compelled to sacrifice. At Heraclea the officers came, set their seals on the doors of the church and posted a guard. Philip's answer was that no seal could shut the Church: he went out and sat with his people on the steps before the closed doors, and taught there, saying — in the sentence for which he is chiefly remembered — that God does not dwell in walls and roofs but in the hearts of men, and that they had lost a building and not a sanctuary.
Brought before the governor Bassus, he was ordered to surrender the sacred vessels and the books. The vessels, he said, he would give, for they were metal and could be replaced; the Scriptures he would not, for they were the word of God, and to hand them over was to hand over God's own voice. They were found and burned in the marketplace notwithstanding — an act the Passio records with the bitterness of an eyewitness, and which the bishop interpreted aloud as a judgment that would fall back on the burners. Bassus, whose wife was a Christian, dealt with him at first with a certain restraint; the deacon Hermes, a man of the curial class who had held municipal office, stood with him throughout.
Under Justinus, and the martyrdom
Bassus was replaced by Justinus, a harder man. Philip was ordered to sacrifice at the temple, and when he refused was dragged by the feet through the streets of the city until he was torn and bleeding, then scourged so that his flesh hung from him. Hermes, put to the same, answered his judges with the calm of a man who had audited accounts all his life. Both were kept in prison, the Passio says for some seven months, and neither the length of it nor the intervals of relief broke them.
At last they were sent under guard to Adrianople and condemned to the fire. They were set in pits dug to the knees with their hands fastened, and the fire was kindled about them; Hermes, before the end, gave careful instructions to a Christian of his acquaintance about property he held in trust for others, so that no man should be the poorer for his death. The presbyter Severus, who had been in hiding and gave himself up when he heard what had happened, followed them a few days later. The year was 304, in the fourth year of the persecution.
The Passio
The Acts of Philip of Heraclea survive in Latin and are counted among the comparatively small number of early passions with a claim to substantial historical value: they are circumstantial about procedure, name two successive governors, quote the interrogations in the manner of court minutes, and are free of the wonders that crowd the later legendary passions. They were used by the Latin martyrologists, and through them the Western commemoration of Philip, Severus and Hermes on October 22 entered the Roman calendar.
Feast and commemoration
August 20 (church date; New Calendar civil August 20, Old Calendar civil September 2), within the Afterfeast of the Dormition. In the OCA and Slavic usage the day is styled "the Hieromartyr Philip, Bishop of Heraclea, and with him the martyrs Severus, Memnon and thirty-seven soldiers in Thrace"; the Greek synaxaria commemorate the Thracian martyrs without Philip. The Roman Martyrology keeps Philip with Severus and Hermes on October 22. No proper Byzantine office is transmitted for him; the day is sung with the propers of the Dormition afterfeast and the common of a hieromartyr.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4
As a sharer in the ways and a successor to the thrones of the Apostles, O divinely-inspired one, thou didst find in contemplation the means to ascend to divine heights; rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst struggle for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Philip: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Philip is painted in the hierarch's form — an aged bishop, white-bearded, in phelonion and omophorion, holding the Gospel and blessing — with the martyr's cross where the type of the hieromartyr is used; in the menologion registers his passion is shown as a burning, the bishop standing in the flames with his hands bound. Where the Slavic tradition paints the company of August 20 he stands at the head of a crowd of soldier-martyrs. Western depictions, following the Passio, sometimes show him with a burning book at his feet — the Scriptures he refused to surrender.
No storable image has been located. The Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for minor saints of the fixed year, covers only September to February and cannot supply an August martyr; no pre-1900 icon or fresco identifiable as this Philip was found in a live search of Wikimedia Commons.
Disputed questions
- August 20 or October 22? The Byzantine synaxaria commemorate Philip on August 20, with the Thracian martyrs; the Latin martyrologies keep him and his two companions on October 22, the date given in the Passio for the burning at Adrianople. The two dates have never been reconciled, and the Byzantine date is probably the day of a local Thracian synaxis rather than of the death. This entry follows the Byzantine calendar, on which the corpus is keyed, and records October 22 as the Western date.
- Which Severus? The Passio gives Philip a presbyter named Severus; the Greek synaxarion for August 20 commemorates a presbyter Severus with the centurion Memnon and thirty-seven others, martyred in Thrace, and does not name Philip at all. Whether these are one Severus or two is the crux of the day. The Slavic and OCA calendars have resolved it by fusing the two notices into a single company headed by Philip; the Greek books leave them separate. This entry keeps them separate as Severus, Memnon and the Thirty-Seven Martyrs and records the fusion rather than adopting it.
- Heraclea, Philippopolis or Adrianople? Philip was bishop of Heraclea and died at Adrianople; the Thracian company of the thirty-seven is attached in several notices to Philippopolis (and in others to Bizye). The similarity of Philippus and Philippopolis is itself a plausible source of the confusion of the two dossiers, and the ancient hagiographers seem already to have felt it.
- Not to be confused with Philip the Apostle, Philip the Deacon — one of the Seven — or Philip of Moscow, the sixteenth-century metropolitan.