Romanus, Teletius and Christina of Nicomedia

The Holy Martyrs Romanus, Teletius and Christina, and the multitude of the saints burned at Nicomedia

Martyr · d. at Nicomedia in Bithynia; no year transmitted

Commemorated 30 May — Perfected by fire at Nicomedia; synaxis kept at the martyrion of Euphemia

A company of martyrs of Nicomedia in Bithynia — Romanus, Teletius (also transmitted as Meletius) and Christina, together with what the Greek notice calls "the multitude of the saints burned at Nicomedia" — who were perfected by fire. No year, no judge, no interrogation and no burial is recorded: the synaxarion gives the place, the names, the manner of death, and one rubric of cultus, that their synaxis was celebrated at the martyrion of Saint Euphemia at Constantinople. Two of the same company, Eusebius and Charalampus, entered the books again under the following day, May 31, and are commemorated there; some manuscripts add Aphrodisius and Agapius to the roll of May 30. They are commemorated on May 30.

Nicomedia

Nicomedia, at the head of the Gulf of Astacus in Bithynia, was Diocletian's eastern residence, and for that reason the city where the Great Persecution was proclaimed in 303 and pressed with the greatest severity. It is also the city with the largest and vaguest martyric roll in the whole Byzantine calendar: the twenty thousand burned in the cathedral at the Nativity, the three thousand six hundred and twenty-eight and the thousand and three of other days, the company of the bishop Anthimus, and a series of smaller groups of whom nothing survives but a few names and a manner of death. This company belongs to that series. Nothing in its notice fixes it more precisely than the persecutions which the city's other martyrdoms occupy, and the fourth century is assigned in this entry — as in the companion entry of May 31 — by inference from the setting and not from any transmitted date.

Perfected by fire

The whole of what the Greek synaxarion transmits is that these saints were cast into the fire at Nicomedia and there finished their contest. Burning was the characteristic mass execution of that city — the method used against the great company at the cathedral — and its use here, on a small group of named persons with a "multitude" attached, points to a batch condemnation rather than to a series of individual trials. It is the plainest kind of martyric notice: a place, a fire, and names.

Of the names themselves nothing is known beyond their form. Romanus is a Roman cognomen borne by several unrelated martyrs of the calendar. Teletius (Τελέτιος) is rare to the point of being suspect, and the transmission also gives Meletius. Christina is one of the transparently Christian names of the persecutions, and its presence shows that the group was mixed, women condemned with the men in the same sentence — the ordinary pattern of a household or congregational arrest.

The synaxis at the martyrion of Euphemia

The one element of the notice that is not a name is a rubric: the synaxis of these martyrs — the station at which their memory was kept — was held at the martyrion of Saint Euphemia. This is characteristic of the Synaxarion of Constantinople, which repeatedly anchors an otherwise unknown company to a shrine of the capital, and it is the mechanism by which such companies survived at all: a station in the city's stational liturgy meant an annual celebration, and an annual celebration meant a calendar entry. Where there was no station, companies of this kind vanished.

It is worth noticing that May 30 also carries the commemoration of the consecration of the church of Saint Euphemia "in Dexiokratianai" at Constantinople, a quarter on the Golden Horn near the later Ayakapı. Whether the martyrion of this rubric is that church or one of the city's other Euphemia shrines — the famous one beside the Hippodrome, or the church at Petra — the notices do not say; but the coincidence of the two commemorations on a single day is unlikely to be accidental, and these martyrs may owe their place on May 30 to the Euphemia dedication that shares it.

Feast and commemoration

May 30 (church date; New Calendar civil May 30, Old Calendar civil June 12). The commemoration is Greek in transmission: it stands in the Greek synaxaria for the day and in the English lists that follow them, and it does not appear on the OCA day-page or in the Russian calendar for May 30, both of which give the day to Isaac of Dalmatia alone. No proper service is transmitted; the common of several martyrs is sung, and at Constantinople the memory was kept at the martyrion of Euphemia as the notice directs. Two of the company are honoured again the next day with Eusebius and Charalampus.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4 (from the 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, O Christ God, save our souls.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

The company is painted by the ordinary convention for a martyric choros: a row of figures of mixed age and sex, the men in tunic and mantle and Christina veiled among them, each holding the martyr's cross, identified only by an inscription of the names with the collective formula ΚΑΙ ΟΙ ΣΥΝ ΑΥΤΟΙΣ, "and those with them." Where a narrative scene is given it is the pyre: the confessors standing upright within the flames with their hands raised in prayer and the executioners feeding the fire at the edges of the composition — the type of the martyrs "perfected by fire," used collectively for the martyrs of Nicomedia and ultimately borrowed from the Three Youths in the furnace.

No pre-1900 image of this company has been identified for this collection. The Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for miniatures of minor companies, covers only September to February and does not reach May; and images found under the individual names belong to the far better known martyrs listed above under Disputed questions and must not be used here.

Disputed questions

The extent of the company, and the doubling on May 31. The Greek transmission of this martyrdom is unusually tangled. The Ὀρθόδοξος Συναξαριστής gives, for May 30, "Romanus, Teletius and Christina and the multitude of the saints burned at Nicomedia"; for May 31 it gives Eusebius and Charalampus, expressly stating that they suffered in the same fire as the martyrs of the preceding day. A second Greek digest merges the two into a single seven-name roll — Aphrodisius, Agapius, Eusebius, Romanus, Teletius, Charalampus, Christina — and the English lists depending on OrthodoxWiki split the material differently again, giving "Aphrodisius, Agapius, Eusebios, Charalampos and Christina, in Nicomedia, by fire" as one entry of May 30 and "Romanos and Teletios, in Nicomedia, by the sword" as another. So the same fire is commemorated on two consecutive days, the roll varies by manuscript, and one branch of the tradition has even given Romanus and Teletius a second and different death. This entry follows the May 30 notice of the Greek synaxaristes as its base, records Aphrodisius and Agapius as names transmitted with the company in the merged recension, and leaves Eusebius and Charalampus where the books put them, at May 31, so that the pair is not entered twice in this collection. The variant "by the sword" is noted and not adopted: every Greek witness consulted has the fire.
Teletius or Meletius. Τελέτιος is transmitted also as Μελέτιος; the variant is a copying matter and is recorded rather than resolved. Neither form is to be confused with Meletius Stratelates (May 24) or Meletius of Antioch (February 12).
The "multitude." Following the repository's practice for group commemorations, the notice's own phrase is reported and no number is asserted; the anonymous many of this notice are not to be identified with any of the numbered Nicomedian companies of other days.
Not to be confused with the numbered martyrs of Nicomedia named above; nor is this Romanus the deacon Romanus of Caesarea (November 18) or Romanus the Melodist (October 1); nor this Christina the Great Martyr Christina of Tyre (July 24); nor the Aphrodisius of the merged roll the leader of the martyrs of Scythopolis (May 4), who were stoned in Palestine.