Plutarch and Companions

The Holy Martyrs Plutarch, Serenus, Heraclides, Heron, the second Serenus and Heraïs, disciples of Origen at Alexandria

Martyr · d. c. 202–203, at Alexandria

Commemorated 28 June — Martyrdom at Alexandria under Septimius Severus

Plutarch, Serenus, Heraclides, Heron, a second Serenus and the woman Heraïs were pupils of the catechetical school of Alexandria who were put to death in the persecution of Septimius Severus, about the years 202–203, when their teacher — the young Origen, not yet twenty and newly set over the school — walked with each of them to the place of execution. Their names and the manner of their deaths are preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea, who took them from Origen's own circle: Plutarch the first to suffer, Serenus perfected by fire, Heraclides and Heron beheaded while still a catechumen and a neophyte, a second Serenus beheaded after torture, and Heraïs, a woman under instruction, who "received her baptism in fire." With them the Greek synaxarion of June 28 names Potamiaena and her mother Marcella, who died in the same persecution and whose entry is kept at the seventh of the month. The company is one of the earliest and best-documented martyrdoms of the Alexandrian church.

The school, the persecution, and the boy who taught it

In the tenth year of Septimius Severus (r. 193–211) — that is, about 202 — an imperial policy against conversion fell heavily upon Alexandria, whither, Eusebius says, Christians were brought from all Egypt and the Thebaid to be tried. In the same moment the catechetical school of the city lost its head: Clement of Alexandria withdrew from the city, and the teaching of the catechumens fell to a boy of about eighteen named Origen, whose own father Leonides had just been beheaded in the same persecution and whose family property had been confiscated.

The pupils who came to him were therefore coming to instruction under the shadow of death, and a number of them did not survive their catechesis. Eusebius, who had access to Origen's letters and to Alexandrian memory through his master Pamphilus, names them; the Church has kept the names ever since, and the Greek Synaxaristes gathers them into a single commemoration on June 28.

The martyrs, one by one

Plutarch was the first of the school to suffer, and the account of his death is bound up with the danger of his teacher: Origen accompanied him to the place of execution, and the crowd, seeing him there and holding him responsible for the young man's death, very nearly killed him on the spot. Plutarch was the brother of Heraclas, who did not suffer but became in time head of the same school and, after Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria (231–247) — so that the one family gave the church of Egypt both a martyr and a patriarch.
Serenus, the second, "received through fire the proof of what he believed": he was burned, and the tradition speaks of his being perfected in the flame.
Heraclides was still a catechumen, not yet baptised, and Heron was a neophyte, newly illumined; both were beheaded.
A second Serenus, distinguished in the account from the first, was subjected to many tortures and then beheaded.
Heraïs (Ἡραΐς) was a woman under instruction in the same school, who was carried off while still a catechumen and, as Eusebius phrases it with the paradox the Church has loved ever since, "received the baptism by fire" — she died in the flames unbaptised in water, and the fire itself was her baptism. Her case is one of the classical patristic proofs of the baptism of blood, the martyr's death that supplies the sacrament to one who has not received it.

Potamiaena, Marcella, and Basilides

Immediately after these, in the same chapter of the same history, Eusebius sets the most famous of the Alexandrian sufferings of that year: that of Potamiaena, a young woman of celebrated beauty and chastity, and her mother Marcella, who were put to death by boiling pitch poured slowly over them from the feet upward; and of Basilides, the soldier detailed to lead Potamiaena to execution, who shielded her from the insults of the mob, received her promise that she would ask for him from her Lord, and three days after her death saw her in a vision place a crown upon his head, whereupon he confessed himself a Christian and was beheaded. The Greek Synaxaristes lists Potamiaena and Marcella together with Plutarch and the rest on June 28; because Potamiaena is kept in the Greek books also on June 7, and is entered in this collection at that day, her life is not repeated here. The company of June 28 should be understood to include her and her mother.

Feast and commemoration

June 28 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 11) in the Greek books, where the notice reads Οἱ Ἅγιοι Πλούταρχος, Σερῆνος, Ἡρακλείδης, Ἥρων, Ἡραΐς, Ποταμιαίνη καὶ Μαρκέλλα. The commemoration is not carried by the Slavonic Menaion for this day, which keeps in its place the Russian memories of Valaam and Robeika; it is therefore a Greek usage on June 28, though the martyrs themselves are of universal veneration and Potamiaena is kept on June 7 in both traditions. No proper service is appointed; the company is sung with the common of many martyrs.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of many 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.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

The disciples of Origen have no developed personal iconography and are not, as a group, a subject of Byzantine painting. Where they appear it is in the ranks of martyrs in a menologion or a calendar-icon of the month, each a young figure in tunic and mantle with the cross of martyrdom in the right hand — Plutarch and the two Sereni as beardless youths, Heron as a neophyte in the white of the newly baptised, Heraïs as a young woman veiled. The scene most likely to be painted is the one that belongs to their group and not to their persons: the fire, in which Serenus and Heraïs were perfected, and which the tradition calls Heraïs's baptism. No pre-1900 image of this company has been identified for this collection. (The related figure of Potamiaena is illustrated at her own entry, from a seventeenth-century etching.)

Disputed questions

Names and number. Eusebius's list gives six of the school (Plutarch, Serenus, Heraclides, Heron, the second Serenus, Heraïs); some copies and some later synaxaria conflate the two Serenuses, giving five. The Greek Synaxaristes for June 28 prints seven names in all by adding Potamiaena and Marcella. This entry follows Eusebius for the school and cross-refers for the other two.
Heraïs and Rhais. The Ἡραΐς of this company is not Rhais of Alexandria (Irais, Iraida, Raisa), the virgin-martyr of Antinoe kept on September 23, who died about 308 in the persecution of Maximinus after joining a shipload of confessors at a well. The names are effectively the same and the city of both is Egyptian, but the two are separated by a century, a different persecution and a different death.
The Heron of August 10. The Heron of this company — the neophyte beheaded at Alexandria about 202–203 — is not Heron the Philosopher, the Greek commemoration of August 10, of whom the synaxarion says only that he was perfected in peace. The two entries have demonstrably contaminated one another in transmission: some Greek notices for August 10 attach the name Heraïs to their Heron, and Heraïs belongs to this June 28 company and to no other.
The date of the persecution. Eusebius places these deaths in the tenth year of Severus, and the traditional reckoning gives 202–203; some modern historians question whether Severus issued a general edict at all and read the Alexandrian events as a local outbreak. The martyrdoms themselves are not in doubt.
Origen's part. The same passage of Eusebius reports the young teacher's own attempt to give himself up, frustrated (the story runs) by his mother's hiding his clothes. Origen is not a saint of the calendar and is not commemorated with his pupils; the tradition honours the disciples without extending the honour to the master.