Speratus and Veronica
The Holy Martyrs Speratus and Veronica
Martyr
Commemorated 17 July — Martyrdom by beheading
Speratus and Veronica are a pair of martyrs whom the Greek synaxaria commemorate on 17 July and of whom, in the Eastern tradition, nothing whatever survives beyond their names, their manner of death, and a two-line epigram. The synaxarion distich says only that Veronica mingled the blood of her throat with the blood of Speratus's neck: both were beheaded. The most probable explanation of the entry — not certain, but strong — is that it is the Byzantine remnant of the Scillitan martyrs of Roman Africa, twelve Christians of Scilli beheaded at Carthage on 17 July 180, whose leader was named Speratus and whose acta are the oldest dated document of the Latin Church.
What the Greek books transmit
The commemoration is one of the thinnest in the synaxarion. Alongside the great-martyr Marina, the Greek books for 17 July carry the bare heading Ἄθλησις τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Σπεράτου καὶ Βηρονίκης, "the contest of the holy martyrs Speratus and Veronica," followed by the customary elegiac distich:
With the blood that flows from thy neck, O Speratus, Veronica mingles the blood of her own throat.
That is the whole of it. No country, no persecution, no emperor, no magistrate, no relics. The modern Greek synaxaristes says as much in as many words: δὲν ἔχουμε λεπτομέρειες — we have no details of the lives of Saint Speratus and Saint Veronica. The names themselves are the strongest evidence of what they were: Speratus is a Latin cognomen, and Beronike / Veronica is a Macedonian-Greek form of Pherenike, "bringer of victory" — a pairing that fits a Latin-speaking province of the Roman West far better than the Greek East.
The Scillitan hypothesis
That inference points somewhere specific. On 17 July 180, at Carthage, the proconsul Publius Vigellius Saturninus tried twelve Christians from the little town of Scilli in proconsular Africa — Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Veturius, Felix, Aquilinus, Laetantius, Januaria, Generosa, Vestia, Donata and Secunda. Speratus was their spokesman, and his answer to the demand that he swear by the genius of Marcus Aurelius is one of the sentences on which the memory of the early Church rests: "I do not recognise the empire of this world; rather I serve that God whom no man has seen nor with these eyes can see." They were sentenced without torture and beheaded the same day. The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs is the earliest dated document of the Latin Church and the first to mention a Latin Bible; the Roman Martyrology keeps them on 17 July.
The coincidence is close to complete: the same day, the same manner of death, the same leading name, a Latin group in which women were prominent. The likeliest account of the Byzantine notice is that the African company reached Constantinople in an abridged Greek form, reduced to its leader and one of its women, with the woman's Latin name (Vestia? Secunda? Donata?) displaced by the familiar Greek Beronike. This corpus records the hypothesis as a hypothesis. It is not asserted by the Greek synaxarion, which knows only the two names.
Feast and commemoration
July 17 (church date; New Calendar civil July 17, Old Calendar civil July 30), in the Greek synaxaria and in OrthodoxWiki's list for the day, always as a secondary commemoration behind the great-martyr Marina. They do not appear in the Slavonic menologia or in the OCA's list for the day. In the West the Scillitan martyrs are kept on the same date. No proper service is appointed; where they are sung at all it is by the common of two or more martyrs.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of martyrs)
Thy martyrs Speratus and Veronica, 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 save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No individual iconographic type of Speratus and Veronica is attested. Where a company as sparsely transmitted as this is painted at all, it is by the ordinary type of the martyrs: a man in tunic and mantle and a woman in maphorion, both holding the cross of martyrdom and shown in the manuscript menologia as a pair under the day's heading. Their beheading would be shown, as the distich describes it, with the sword. No pre-1900 image of them has been located for this collection, and none should be expected: the Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for minor saints of the fixed year, covers only September to February.
Disputed questions
- Whether they are the Scillitan martyrs. See above: probable on the convergence of date, name and manner of death, but not transmitted as such by any Greek source consulted here. The Greek notice carries no year and no place, and the corpus therefore records no century for them and indexes them under the unknown century.
- Whether they are two, or two out of many. The synaxarion presents a pair. If the Scillitan identification is right, they are the surviving heads of a company of twelve.
- Not to be confused with Veronica of Paneas, the woman healed of the issue of blood, commemorated five days earlier on 12 July. The two Veronicas are quite distinct, and their proximity in the calendar is the reason the confusion is worth naming.