Quintus of Phrygia
The Holy Confessor and Wonderworker Quintus of Phrygia
Confessor · Wonderworker · d. c. 283
Commemorated 6 July — Peaceful repose after confession under Aurelian
Quintus was a Phrygian, brought up a Christian, who settled in the district of Aeolis on the Asian coast and there gave himself to almsgiving and to the healing of the possessed. Under Aurelian (270–275) the governor Rufus attempted to compel him to sacrifice, and was himself seized by a demon; Quintus delivered him in the name of Christ and was released with gifts. Travelling toward Pergamum he was seized by the pagans of Cumae and tortured until an earthquake threw down their temple; a later magistrate, Clearchus, had his legs broken, and they were made whole again. He lived some ten years more, working miracles, and reposed in peace about the year 283 — a confessor, not a martyr.
Phrygia and Aeolis
Quintus — the Greek writes the Latin name Quintus as Κόϊντος, whence the English form Cointus found in some calendars — was born in Phrygia, the inland province of Asia Minor that had been Christian ground since the apostolic age and was famous in the second and third centuries both for the number of its confessors and for the Montanist enthusiasm that arose there. He was raised, the account says, in the faith and in piety from his childhood.
In adult life he moved west to the coastal region of Aeolis, settling in a village there. He had means, and used them: the synaxarion describes a life of open-handed charity to the poor and of continual prayer, in the course of which he received the gift of exorcism, so that those tormented by unclean spirits were brought to him and healed. This is the whole of the positive record of his ministry, and the rest of the account is the record of what the authorities did about it.
The governor Rufus
The persecution of the emperor Aurelian reached the province, and the governor Rufus summoned Quintus and ordered him to sacrifice to the gods. Before the matter could be pressed, the governor was himself struck down and possessed. His household turned to the very man he had arraigned; Quintus prayed over him and cast the spirit out in the name of Christ. Rufus, freed, dismissed the case, released him, and pressed gifts on him. The episode is the pivot of the narrative: the confessor's power is exercised not against the persecutor but for him.
Cumae, the earthquake, and the broken legs
Quintus afterwards set out for Pergamum. On the road he was taken by the pagan inhabitants of Cumae — the Aeolian Cyme, not the Italian city of the same name — who required him to sacrifice and, when he refused, tortured him. The account relates that God intervened directly: an earthquake shook the place and brought down the temple of the idols. Terrified, his captors left off beating him, but did not let him go, and he remained in custody until the office changed hands.
The new magistrate, Clearchus, took up the case and ordered the confessor's legs broken — a punishment intended to leave the victim a cripple for life. By the grace of God the shattered bones were restored, and Quintus walked out whole. Thereafter, the sources say, he was left alone.
Later years and repose
He lived about ten years more in freedom, healing the sick and the possessed and continuing the almsgiving that had marked him from the first, and fell asleep in peace about the year 283. Because he suffered for Christ without dying by violence, the Church numbers him among the confessors, and because of the miracles both wrought on him and wrought through him she adds the title wonderworker.
Feast and commemoration
July 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 19). Quintus is carried on this day by the Greek synaxaria, the Slavonic Menaion, and the Antiochian and OCA calendars, among the lesser commemorations under the principal feast of St Sisoes the Great. No proper office is appointed; he is commemorated with the common of a venerable confessor. His memory belongs particularly to the Church in western Asia Minor.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a confessor)
O champion of Orthodoxy and teacher of piety, thou didst confess Christ before the tyrants and wast not shaken; the demons fled at thy word, and thy broken limbs were made whole by grace. O Quintus, our God-bearing father, entreat Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Quintus is shown as a layman of mature years, bearded, in tunic and mantle, holding a cross in the right hand — the confessor's cross, not the martyr's palm — or with both hands open in prayer; where a distinguishing scene is added it is the deliverance of the governor Rufus, the demon issuing from the possessed man's mouth as the saint stretches out his hand, or the collapsing temple at Cumae with the confessor standing unhurt among the ruins. Because his miracle was the restoration of shattered legs, later Greek popular devotion invoked him for diseases and injuries of the limbs, and votive images reflect this. No pre-1900 icon of him has been located for this collection, and the Menologion of Basil II — the ordinary first resort for minor saints — covers only September to February and does not reach his day.
Disputed questions
- Chronology. The account sets the confrontation with the governor Rufus under Aurelian (270–275) and the repose ten years after the affair at Cumae, giving c. 283; the intervals do not add up exactly, and the date of repose is a synaxarial estimate rather than a record.
- Which Cumae? Greek Κύμη is the Aeolian city on the Asian coast south of Phocaea, on the road from Aeolis toward Pergamum, which fits the narrative geography exactly. Latin renderings and some English calendars have imported the Italian Cumae near Naples, which cannot be right.
- Confessor or martyr? A few late lists style him martyr. The Greek synaxarion is explicit that he reposed in peace, and the title ὁμολογητής (confessor) is the correct one.
- Not to be confused with the several other bearers of the common Roman name Quintus in the martyrologies, in particular the Quintus who appears among the companions of St Polycarp's passion at Smyrna as a Phrygian who came forward of his own accord and then apostatised — a wholly distinct and unhappy figure, sometimes confused with this saint precisely because both are called Phrygians.