Eikon

Silvan of Gaza

The Holy Hieromartyr Silvanus, Bishop of the Churches about Gaza

Hieromartyr · Bishop · Priest · d. 311

Commemorated 4 May — Commemoration with the forty martyrs of Phaeno in the Slavic Menaion and the OCA calendar, 14 October — Beheading at the copper mines of Phaeno with his forty companions

Silvan of Gaza (†311) is one of the last martyrs of the great persecution in Palestine, and one of the few saints of his rank whose death is recorded by an eyewitness historian: Eusebius of Caesarea, who watched the persecution unfold in his own province, describes him as a soldier turned clergyman of Gaza, an old man of exemplary gentleness, who confessed Christ under torture, was condemned to the copper mines of Phaeno, was made bishop of the churches about Gaza, and was beheaded at the mines with thirty-nine companions — about forty in one day — in the persecution's final spasm under Maximinus. The calendars commemorate him on October 14, some styling him presbyter and some bishop; both are true in sequence.

Silvan came from the country around Gaza, on the southern coast of Palestine, and in his youth served as a soldier. Leaving the army, he entered the clergy and became a presbyter of the church of Gaza, where he won many pagans to the faith. When the persecution of Diocletian reached Palestine, he was brought to trial at Caesarea, the provincial capital; Eusebius, who records the confessors of those tribunals year by year, counts Silvan among those who bore torture manfully at the very outset of the persecution and adds the detail that gives his portrait its character — that in him a soldier's endurance was joined to a singular mildness and simplicity of life. He calls him "a most blessed old man," a "truly wonderful" example of what a Christian bishop should be.

Confessing Christ and refusing sacrifice, Silvan was not executed at once but condemned, like hundreds of Palestinian and Egyptian Christians in those years, to penal labour in the copper mines of Phaeno, in the desert south of the Dead Sea — a slow martyrdom of chains, branding, mutilation and starvation labour which Eusebius describes at length. There the confessors, maimed and half-blinded, organised themselves into a worshipping church in the mine camps; and there Silvan, by now aged and worn to exhaustion, was made bishop of the churches about Gaza, shepherding his fellow prisoners and preaching Christ unweariedly to all around him — the boldness which, the Russian Lives note, drew upon the camp the final anger of the authorities.

In 311, when the dying persecution flared up for the last time under Maximinus Daza, the order came to destroy the church of the mines. Silvan was beheaded together with thirty-nine others — about forty in a single day, Egyptians and Palestinians together, among them John the Egyptian, a blind confessor who knew whole books of Scripture by heart and recited them in the assemblies. Eusebius sets this slaughter at the very end of the Palestinian persecution: Silvan, he says, was kept by God to be as it were its seal, the last of the martyrs of his province. The Greek synaxarion of October 14 gives him a distich playing on his end: the sword that passed through Silvan's neck showed Silvan the cutter-down of error.

Feast and commemoration

October 14 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 27), in the Greek synaxarion, the Russian calendar (which heads him "hieromartyr… presbyter of Gaza, 4th century") and the OCA's lives of the day. No proper service is appointed; the common of a hieromartyr is used where his memory is kept liturgically. Some Western martyrologies keep the memory of Silvanus of Gaza and his companions in May; the Byzantine date is October 14.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a hieromartyr)

Sharing the ways of the Apostles and a successor of their thrones, thou didst find thy practice, O inspired of God, a ladder of ascent to the vision of God; wherefore, rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst suffer for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Silvanus. Intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

No verifiable pre-modern image of Silvan has been found on Wikimedia Commons (the search extended to the Menologion of Basil II, which transmits no miniature for him at this date); the entry therefore stores no image, and the saint is flagged for the the list of icons still being sought index. He would be painted as an aged bishop in phelonion and omophorion, white-bearded, with the Gospel book, and — where the scene is narrative — beheaded among his forty companions at the desert mines.

Disputed questions

  • Presbyter or bishop. The Russian calendar's heading styles him "presbyter of Gaza," and the OCA's notice likewise says "first a soldier, then a priest"; yet the body of the same Russian Life, following Eusebius, has him consecrated bishop, and Eusebius twice calls him bishop of the churches about Gaza. The stages are successive — soldier, presbyter, confessor at the mines, bishop — and this entry carries both offices, leading with the episcopate in which he died. The Greek synaxarion notice calls him simply "the martyr Silvanus," and the Greek tradition adds the epithet "the Elder" (ὁ Γέρων).
  • The forty companions. The Greek synaxarion of the same day separately commemorates "the Forty Martyrs of Egypt and Palestine, perfected by the sword" — in all likelihood the very company beheaded with Silvan at Phaeno, whom the Russian tradition counts as "forty soldiers converted by him" (Eusebius says nothing of their being soldiers). Whether the two listings are one commemoration doubled is an identity question the synaxaria do not settle; it is flagged in this day's calendar file rather than resolved here.
  • Not to be confused with the hieromartyr Silvanus, bishop of Emesa in Syria (†c. 312, commemorated January 29 with the deacon Luke and the reader Mocius), his near-exact contemporary, who died in the same persecution and is constantly confused with him in secondary literature; nor with the apostle Silvanus (Silas) of the Seventy (July 30); nor with the modern Silouan the Athonite (September 24), whose monastic name is the same Silvanus.

Sources

  1. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History VIII.13 and Martyrs of Palestine 7 and 13 — the contemporary eyewitness record: Silvan's Gaza origins, his confession at Caesarea, the condemnation to the Phaeno copper mines, his episcopate over the churches about Gaza, his character, and the beheading of the forty (with the blind John the Egyptian) in 311 as the persecution's last act in Palestine.
  2. Greek Menaion synaxarion for October 14 (consulted live at glt.goarch.org) — the notice "the holy martyr Silvanus" with its distich, and the same day's separate listing of the Forty Martyrs of Egypt and Palestine; Greek listing also consulted live at saint.gr ("Ὅσιος Σιλβανὸς ὁ Γέρων, hieromartyr").
  3. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, October 14 (consulted live) — soldier, then priest; the false accusation and the mines; the beheading with forty others in old age.
  4. Russian calendar and Life for civil October 27 (consulted live at azbyka.ru) — the "presbyter of Gaza" heading, the episcopate in the body of the Life, the trial at Caesarea, and the year 311.