Sisinius, Cyriacus and the Martyrs of Rome
The Holy Hieromartyrs Sisinius and Cyriacus, Deacons of Rome, and the Holy Martyrs Smaragdus, Largus, Apronian, Saturninus, Papias, Maurus and Crescentian, and the Holy Martyrs Priscilla, Lucina and Artemia
Hieromartyr · Martyr · Deacon · d. c. 304–310, at Rome
Commemorated 7 June — The martyrdoms of the Roman company of Thrason under Diocletian and Maximian
On June 7 the Byzantine calendars commemorate, in one long notice, the company of Roman martyrs formed around the relief of the Christian prisoners in the last years of the Great Persecution. A wealthy Christian of the city, Thrason, spent his fortune feeding and ransoming those condemned to the public works; his almoners Sisinius and Cyriacus were ordained deacons for the work by Marcellinus, and carried it on under Marcellus. Arrested for it, they turned the prison into a mission: the jailer Apronian was converted by the light that shone from Sisinius's face and was baptised with those he guarded, and the soldiers Papias and Maurus by the melting of the pagan incense-tripods at the prayer of Saturninus. The whole company was destroyed piecemeal between about 304 and 310 — Sisinius and Saturninus beheaded on June 7, Apronian beheaded, Papias and Maurus dying under the lash, and Cyriacus with Smaragdus, Largus and Crescentian perishing in the torments, together with the women Priscilla, Lucina and Artemia and, the account says, twenty-one others. They are honoured together as the martyrs of the works of mercy.
Rome under the edicts
The setting is Rome in the years between 303 and the peace of the Church: the edicts of Diocletian and Maximian in force, then the reign of Maxentius in the city, the churches confiscated, the clergy hunted, and — the detail on which this whole company turns — Christians in numbers condemned not to immediate death but to the public works: the quarries, the sand-pits, the baths that Diocletian was then building, and the imperial stables. Prisoners under such a sentence had to be fed by somebody, and it was on that practical need that the Roman church organised what may be called its diaconate of the prisons.
Thrason and his almoners
The funds came from Thrason, a Christian of great wealth who, in the words of the Roman Acts, laid out his substance on the relief of the confessors: bread and clothing carried in to the condemned, bribes paid to the guards, bodies bought back from the executioners and buried. He did not distribute it himself. Three men are named as his agents — Sisinius, Cyriacus and Saturninus — and the bishop of Rome ordained the first two deacons, which is to say that the almsgiving was made an office of the Church and not a private charity.
The work was illegal on its face; to comfort a condemned Christian was to be one. Sisinius was taken first, and with him the others in turn.
The prison
What the Acts remember about the arrest is not the torture but the arithmetic of conversion, and the scenes are the reason the company was never forgotten.
Apronian was the official set to guard and examine Sisinius. Watching the deacon, he saw his face shine with a heavenly light, and heard a voice; and he asked for baptism, was instructed, and was baptised and given the Mysteries by the bishop — after which he confessed Christ before the tribunal and was beheaded.
Papias and Maurus were soldiers on the same duty. At the prayer of Saturninus the bronze tripods on which incense was burning before the idols in the prison melted and ran; the two believed, were baptised, and were afterwards scourged with loaded thongs and beaten about the mouth until they died.
Cyriacus the deacon is remembered chiefly for exorcisms: the Roman legend has him free Artemia, whom it calls a daughter of Diocletian, from a demon, and afterwards travel to Persia at the request of the king whose daughter was likewise afflicted, returning to Rome to be arrested, tortured and killed. Smaragdus, Largus and Crescentian suffered with him, and the women Priscilla and Lucina — Roman matrons of the same charitable circle, who gave houses and burial-ground for the martyrs — and Artemia herself, with a company the notice numbers at twenty-one more.
Sisinius and Saturninus, after long imprisonment and the torments, were beheaded, and it is their day, June 7, that carries the whole company in the Byzantine books.
The burials
The company's afterlife is bound up with the Roman cemeteries. Lucina and Priscilla are remembered as the owners of the ground and the crypts in which the martyrs of these years were laid — the cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria, where both Marcellinus and Marcellus were buried, and the burial-place on the Via Ostiensis to which Cyriacus and his companions were carried and where a titulus of Cyriacus later stood. In the East, where none of the tombs could be visited, the whole cycle collapsed into a single day's notice; in Rome it stayed spread across the year at the several graves.
Feast and commemoration
June 7 (church date; New Calendar civil June 7; Old Calendar civil June 20). The Byzantine notice is headed in the Greek and Slavonic books by Sisinius the deacon — "and those with him" — and is set immediately after the notice of Marcellinus, pope of Rome, with Marcellus named within it; the day also carries the martyr Theodotus of Ancyra, Daniel of Sketis, and the women martyrs of Caesarea and Alexandria. No proper hymnody is appointed: the common of several martyrs serves.
The company belongs, with Theodotus of Ancyra himself, to that small and striking class of martyrs crowned not for refusing to sacrifice in the first instance but for the corporal works of mercy — feeding the imprisoned and burying the dead — which the persecuting edicts made criminal. Read together on the same day, the Galatian innkeeper and the Roman deacons make a single point about what the persecution actually punished.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contests received crowns of incorruption from Thee our God; for having Thy strength they laid low the tyrants and broke the powerless insolence of the demons. At their supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Ye carried bread to the pits and the quarries, and bought back the bodies of the slain, and for this alms ye were reckoned criminals; wherefore the prison became your church, the jailer your brother and the soldiers your fellow-martyrs, O deacons Sisinius and Cyriacus with all your company: entreat Christ for the imprisoned and the forgotten.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The company has no group type in Orthodox painting and would be met, if at all, as a row of named figures in a menologion: Sisinius and Cyriacus in the deacon's sticharion and orarion, each with a censer and the small cross of the martyrs, since the deacon's dress is the one thing that individuates them; Apronian, Papias and Maurus in the short tunic, cloak and boots of soldiers and officials, holding crosses; Smaragdus, Largus, Saturninus and Crescentian as laymen in tunic and mantle; and the three women — Priscilla, Lucina, Artemia — veiled in the maphorion with crosses in their hands.
Western art gives Cyriacus the deacon the one distinctive attribute in the group, a dragon or demon at his feet or on a chain, from the exorcism of Artemia, and sometimes a millstone; and it paints the melting of the idols' tripods, which is the group's proper narrative scene, with the two soldiers looking on.
No pre-1900 image of any member of this company, securely identified by inscription and distinguishable from the many homonymous martyrs, has been located for this collection. The risk of misidentification here is unusually high — Cyriacus, Saturninus and Sisinius are among the most repeated names in the martyrologies — so no candidate has been stored.
Disputed questions
- The status of the Acts. Everything narrative in this entry comes from the Roman Passio Marcelli and the related Acts of the deacon Cyriacus, a group of late, legendary and mutually borrowing texts of perhaps the fifth or sixth century. Their historical core is thin but not nothing: that Roman Christians were condemned to the public works, that the Church organised the relief of prisoners through deacons, and that certain martyrs were buried in the cemeteries the texts name, are all credible and in part independently attested. The dramatic episodes — the shining face, the melting tripods, the exorcism of an emperor's daughter, the journey to Persia — are hagiography and are reported here as the texts report them.
- Artemia, daughter of Diocletian. No daughter of Diocletian named Artemia is known to history; his one recorded daughter was Valeria, wife of Galerius. The motif of the persecutor's possessed daughter healed by the martyr is a stock one, and appears again in the same Acts with the king of Persia. Artemia is transmitted as a martyr of the company and is so commemorated; the imperial parentage is legend.
- One company or several? The Latin calendars keep these martyrs on separate days at their several tombs: Cyriacus with Largus and Smaragdus on August 8, Saturninus and Sisinnius on November 29, Papias and Maurus on January 29, Thrason on December 11. The Byzantine synaxarion has gathered them onto June 7 around Marcellus and Marcellinus, which is a liturgical decision rather than a historical claim about a single execution. The entry follows the Byzantine grouping, as the calendar this collection serves does, and records the Latin dispersal.
- Priscilla and Lucina. Both names belong to the topography of the Roman catacombs as much as to the martyrology, and both are attached to more than one story. Lucina in particular appears also in the passion of Sebastian of Rome, where she is the matron who is told in a vision to recover Sebastian's body from the sewer and lay it in the catacombs — whether that is the same woman as the Lucina of this company, or the same name doing the same office twice in a related group of legends, cannot be decided. Neither is to be confused with Marcella of Rome (January 31).
- Cyriacus of Rome is not to be confused with Cyriacus the Hermit of Palestine (September 29), nor with the Cyriacus of Hesperus, Zoe, Cyriacus and Theodulus; and Sisinius the deacon is not Sisinius of Cyzicus (the confessor-bishop, November 23), nor the Sisinius of the Nine Martyrs of Cyzicus, nor the Sisinius of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. Saturninus and Crescentian are among the commonest names in the Roman martyrology and are distinguished here only by their company.
- Which bishop ordained them? The OCA notice has Marcellinus ordain Sisinius and Cyriacus deacons and Marcellus baptise their converts, which fits the chronology of the two pontificates and the deaths spread over 304 to 310; some recensions of the Acts give the whole to Marcellus. The difference is of no consequence for the commemoration, which keeps popes and company on one day.