Severus, Memnon and the Thirty-Seven Martyrs
The Holy Martyrs Severus the Presbyter, Memnon the Centurion, and the Thirty-Seven Martyrs with them in Thrace
Martyr · Hieromartyr · Priest · d. c. 304, in Thrace
Commemorated 20 August — Martyrdom in Thrace under Diocletian
A company of thirty-nine martyrs of Thrace, put to death in the persecution of Diocletian about the year 304 and commemorated together on August 20. At their head stand Severus, a presbyter, and Memnon, a centurion whom Severus had converted; with them suffered thirty-seven more, most of them soldiers of Memnon's command. The notices are agreed that the two leaders were tortured with a peculiar and inventive cruelty — Memnon flayed, Severus torn with iron hooks, seared with heated rings on his fingers and a red-hot belt about his body, and finally blinded — and that the thirty-seven had their hands and feet struck off and were cast into a burning furnace. In the Slavic and American calendars the company is placed under the name of Philip of Heraclea; the Greek books keep it by itself.
The centurion and the presbyter
The transmitted account is short and stands in the synaxaria without a developed passio. In a city of Thrace — the notices name Philippopolis and, in the Greek tradition reflected in the modern Greek calendars, Bizye — a presbyter called Severus brought to the faith a centurion named Memnon. That the convert was an officer is the pivot of the whole account: the men of his command followed him, and it is from that unit that the thirty-seven are drawn, so that the group is remembered in the Slavic calendar simply as "thirty-seven soldiers." The conversion of a whole file of the garrison could not be hidden, and the governor, learning what Severus had done, took the two of them first.
The passion
Memnon was flayed, the strips of his skin taken from him while he lived. Severus was raked with iron hooks, then tortured with heated iron rings forced on his fingers and a red-hot belt bound about his waist; last of all he was blinded. Neither recanted, and the thirty-seven with them held firm through the sight of it. The thirty-seven were then mutilated — their hands and feet cut off — and thrown into a fiery furnace, where they died; the two leaders were despatched with them or immediately after. The year is put at 304, the third and fiercest year of Diocletian's persecution, when the edicts had passed from the seizure of books and buildings to the general requirement of sacrifice, and when soldiers who would not sacrifice were killed as mutineers rather than tried as Christians.
The roll of names
The Slavic tradition transmits a full roll of the thirty-seven, which the Greek notices do not: Orion, Antilinus, Molias, Eudaemon, Silvanus, Sabinus, Eustathius, Straton, Timothy, Palmatus, Mestus, Nikon, Diphilus, Domitian, Maximus, Neophytus, Victor, Rinus, Saturninus, Epaphroditus, Cercanus, Gaius, Zoticus, Cronion, Anthony, Horus, Zoilus, Tyrannus, Agathon, Panstenus, Achilles, Panthyrias, Chrysanthus, Athenodorus, Pantoleon, Theosebius, and Genephlius of Philippopolis. The list has the mixed Greek, Latin and Egyptian names one expects of a Roman garrison of the period, and the last name carries a place — Philippopolis — which is one of the grounds for locating the passion there. Manuscript variance in the forms is considerable, and the roll is given here as it is transmitted rather than asserted as a definitive register; a company remembered by a round number of "thirty-seven" and a list of names that just fills it is more likely to preserve a genuine memory of the number than a verified nominal roll.
Feast and commemoration
August 20 (church date; New Calendar civil August 20, Old Calendar civil September 2), within the Afterfeast of the Dormition. The Greek synaxaria give the day as "the holy martyrs Severus and Memnon and the thirty-seven martyrs with them"; the Slavic Menaion and the OCA give "Severus the presbyter and Memnon, and with them thirty-seven martyrs," under the heading of Philip of Heraclea. The Russian calendar consulted live for the day (September 2 New Style) lists Severus, Memnon and the thirty-seven and does not name Philip — a further sign that the fusion is not universal even within the Slavic books. No proper office is appointed; the day is sung with the propers of the Dormition afterfeast and the common of martyrs.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received imperishable crowns from thee our God; for having thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble arrogance of the demons: by their prayers save thou our souls.
Iconography
The company is painted in the manner of the martyr-companies of the menologia: a crowd of heads ranked behind two figures set forward — the presbyter Severus in phelonion and epitrachelion, holding the cross, and Memnon in the short tunic and military cloak of a soldier-saint, sometimes with the centurion's staff. Where the passion itself is shown, the furnace occupies the lower register with the thirty-seven within it, and the flaying of Memnon is indicated at one side. In the Slavic recensions the group stands behind the bishop Philip.
No storable image has been located. The Menologion of Basil II, which supplies most of the menologion miniatures of minor martyr-companies, covers only September to February and cannot serve an August commemoration; a live search of Wikimedia Commons returned nothing identifiable as this company.
Disputed questions
- Where? Philippopolis (the modern Plovdiv), Bizye (Vize, in Eastern Thrace), and — through the fusion with the passion of Philip of Heraclea — Adrianople are all named in one source or another. All three are Thracian; no choice among them is possible on the evidence, and the entry names the province rather than the city.
- The attachment to Philip of Heraclea. The Slavic and OCA calendars head this company with the hieromartyr Philip, bishop of Heraclea, whose own Latin Passio gives him a presbyter named Severus and a deacon named Hermes, and who died at Adrianople and is kept in the West on October 22. Two presbyters called Severus, martyred in the same province in the same persecution, are very likely to have been confused, and the resemblance of Philippus to Philippopolis will not have helped. The Greek synaxarion for August 20 names Severus, Memnon and the thirty-seven without Philip. This corpus keeps the two dossiers in separate entries — see Philip of Heraclea — and records the fusion as a fact about the calendars rather than about the martyrs.
- Not to be confused with Severus and Artemidorus (September 8), nor with Memnon the Wonderworker or Memnon of Ephesus. The name Memnon is not common in the calendar, and the centurion of August 20 is distinguished by his rank and his company.