Sisinius of Cyzicus

The Holy Confessor Sisinius, Bishop of Cyzicus

Confessor · Bishop · d. c. 325

Sisinius of Cyzicus was a confessor and bishop of the early fourth century. During the persecution of Diocletian he was condemned to be dragged to death behind a horse through the streets, but survived the torture and lived on to shepherd the church of Cyzicus in Asia Minor; he reposed in peace about the year 325. He is commemorated on November 23.

Little is recorded of Sisinius beyond the bare notice preserved in the synaxaria. He was bishop of Cyzicus, the ancient city on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara. In the great persecution under the emperor Diocletian (284–305) he was seized for his confession of Christ and sentenced to be tied behind a horse and dragged through the streets until he died. The tradition relates that he survived this torment — a confessor rather than a martyr — and, when the peace of the Church came under Constantine, continued in his episcopal office, reposing in peace about 325. Nothing further of his acts has come down; he belongs to that great company of bishops who bore witness in the last persecution and lived to see the Church's deliverance.

Feast and commemoration

November 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil December 6). His commemoration is a minor one, kept together with the greater feasts of the day; it falls within the Nativity Fast and the afterfeast of the Entry of the Theotokos.

Iconography

Sisinius is depicted, where he appears, as a bishop-confessor in hierarchical vesture, blessing and holding the Gospel; there is no widely attested individual icon type. No public-domain image securely identified as this Sisinius has been located (see the list of icons still being sought).

Disputed questions

Not to be confused with Sisinnius (Sisinius) I, Patriarch of Constantinople (426–427), a different and later hierarch (whose name recurs in the succession lists connected with Proclus of Constantinople), nor with the several martyrs named Sisinnius in the ancient calendar. The Cyzicus saint is the fourth-century confessor-bishop of November 23.
Not to be confused with Emilian of Cyzicus, likewise a confessor and bishop of the same see but of the ninth century (kept August 8 and January 8), who suffered exile for the holy icons under Leo the Armenian: two confessor-hierarchs of Cyzicus, five hundred years apart.