Polychronius of Babylon
The Holy Hieromartyr Polychronius, Bishop of Babylon, and those with him
Hieromartyr · Bishop · Priest · Deacon · Martyr · d. c. 251
Commemorated 30 July — The bishop of Babylon and his priests, deacons and fellow-martyrs
Polychronius, bishop of Babylon, suffered in the persecution of Decius (249–251) with a company of his own clergy — the priests Parmenius, Helimenas and Chrysotelus and the deacons Luke and Mocius — and with a number of laymen of Persia. Brought before the emperor and required to sacrifice, he answered that Christians offer themselves in sacrifice to Christ and never worship the work of men's hands, and thereafter, when questioned again, kept silence altogether, so that the emperor had his mouth beaten in with stones. His priests and deacons were burned and then beheaded at Cordula. Two Persian nobles who were secretly Christians, Abdon and Sennen, gathered up the bodies and buried them by night, and for that were carried to Rome, thrown to the beasts — which would not touch them — and killed with the sword about the year 251. With them the synaxaria name Maximus and Olympius. The Church keeps the whole company on July 30.
The bishop who would not answer
The passion of Polychronius opens in the years when the emperor Decius, having determined to restore the old worship by universal requirement of sacrifice, carried his armies east. It sets his campaign in Babylon — by which the text means the Persian lands generally, the ancient name standing for the empire beyond the Euphrates as it does throughout Christian literature — and it makes Polychronius the bishop of the Christians there.
Decius had the bishop arrested, and with him the three priests Parmenius, Helimenas (also given as Elimas) and Chrysotelus, and the two deacons Luke and Mocius, and commanded them to sacrifice to the gods. Polychronius answered for them all: we offer ourselves as a sacrifice to our Lord Jesus Christ, and we do not worship idols made with hands. They were beaten and thrown into prison.
At the second hearing the bishop said nothing at all. The silence is the centre of the account, and the text explains it: he had bound himself from his youth by a discipline of few words, and would not spend them on the emperor. Parmenius the priest answered in his stead — "our bishop does not cast the pearls of his words before swine" — and for that Decius ordered his tongue cut out; whereupon, the passion says, Parmenius went on speaking as clearly as before. Enraged, the emperor had stones thrust into the bishop's mouth and his face beaten with them until he died, before the temple of Saturn, with his hands still raised in prayer.
Abdon and Sennen, and the rest of the company
Two Persian nobles of the emperor's own following, Abdon and Sennen, were secretly Christians. They came by night, took up the bishop's body and buried it beside the city wall. The three priests and two deacons were carried to a place the text calls Cordula, and there condemned to the fire; a voice was heard from heaven over them, which Decius pronounced sorcery, and they were beheaded. Abdon and Sennen buried these also — and were found out.
Taken in chains to Rome with the emperor's train, the two were required to sacrifice before the Senate, refused, were dragged through the city and exposed in the amphitheatre to lions and bears, which lay down and would not touch them. They were then cut down with the sword, about the year 251, and their bodies dragged before the idol of the Sun and left; the Christians recovered them and buried them, and their relics were afterwards laid in the church of St Mark at Rome. With this company the synaxaria name also Maximus and Olympius, Persians converted by the constancy of the martyrs and beaten to death with clubs.
The two halves of the tradition
This is a passion in two countries, and the Church's calendars have divided it. The East keeps the whole group together on July 30 under the name of the bishop: "the hieromartyr Polychronius, bishop of Babylon, and those with him." The West separated them: Abdon and Sennen, whose relics and cult were at Rome and are attested there very early — a cemetery on the Via Portuensis, a basilica, and an entry in the fourth-century Roman calendars — are kept on July 30, the same day; Polychronius and his clergy, whose story reached Rome only in the text, were entered at February 17. The eastern arrangement is the older and more coherent one, since it keeps the narrative whole.
Feast and commemoration
July 30 (church date; New Calendar civil July 30; Old Calendar civil August 12) in the Byzantine calendars, where the whole company is entered under the bishop's name. The day falls in the free season between the Apostles' Fast and the Dormition Fast, which opens on August 1. The office of the day belongs to the apostles of the Seventy; Polychronius and his companions are a synaxarion notice without proper hymns, and the Antiochian, Greek and Slavic books agree in listing them so. The Latin calendars keep Abdon and Sennen on the same day at Rome — one of the few instances where East and West commemorate the same martyrs on the same date by independent routes — and Polychronius with his clergy on February 17.
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 Polychronius: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Thou didst keep silence before the tyrant and speak boldly before God, O Polychronius; and thy priests and deacons, and the strangers who buried thee, followed thee through fire and sword into one crown. With them intercede for us who keep your memory.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Polychronius is painted as a hierarch-martyr: bearded and elderly, in phelonion and omophorion, blessing and holding the Gospel-book, and where the company is shown he stands at the head of it with his priests in the phelonion and his deacons in the sticharion and orarion. His particular attribute in the narrative cycles is the instrument of his death — the stones with which his mouth was beaten — and, in some Western images, a stone held in the hand. Abdon and Sennen have a distinct and much older Western iconography of their own, Persian nobles in soft caps, trousers and belted tunics, crowned by Christ, as they appear in the seventh-century frescoes of their crypt in the catacomb of Pontianus at Rome, and receiving their crowns in the Romanesque and Catalan altar frontals of the Pyrenees, where they are widely venerated.
No pre-1900 icon of Polychronius has been stored for this collection. The one pre-1900 image of him readily available is a 1636 engraving by Jacques Callot, from a printed series of the saints of the year, showing him as a Western bishop with mitre and crozier under the February 17 date; it is public domain, but it is a Latin devotional print rather than an icon of the Byzantine tradition, and it has not been stored. A the list of icons still being sought entry stands for him.
Disputed questions
- What is history here? The Passio Polychronii belongs to a cycle of Roman passions of the fifth or sixth century which arranges a great many martyrs around the figure of Decius, and its geography and chronology will not bear examination: Decius never campaigned in Persia, "Babylon" had no Christian bishop of that name on record, and a Persian bishop and Persian nobles brought to Rome for judgment is a Roman storyteller's conception rather than a third-century procedure. What is certainly early is the cult of Abdon and Sennen at Rome, which the archaeology and the fourth-century calendars attest independently of the text; the rest of the company appears to have been drawn to them by the passion. The Church keeps the commemoration as received; this entry records both the account and its standing.
- The names. Parmenius appears as Permenius, Helimenas as Elimas or Olympias in some recensions, Chrysotelus as Chrysotelos, Mocius as Mucius; the number of the clergy is three priests and two deacons in most books, five priests in a few. Sennen is also written Sennes and Senne. The variants are those of a text translated more than once between Latin and Greek.
- Not to be confused with the other Polychronii of the calendar: the presbyter Polychronius commemorated on October 7, a martyr of the fourth century and of a wholly different passion; nor with Polychronius of Apamea, the bishop who took part in the Council of Ephesus.
- Not to be confused, likewise, with the Persian martyrs of Sapor's persecution a century later, with whom the eastern setting of this passion invites confusion; those suffered under a Persian king for refusing the sun, these under a Roman emperor for refusing the Capitol.