Ten Martyrs of Crete

Origins and early life

The ten belonged to Crete, an island evangelised in apostolic times: the Apostle Paul left Titus there to ordain presbyters "in every city" (Titus 1:5), and the Church of Crete counted Titus its first bishop. By the middle of the third century Christianity was well rooted among the Cretans, though the island remained overwhelmingly pagan, with Gortyna — its Roman administrative centre in the fertile Messara plain — a stronghold of the old cults. The sources name the ten as men drawn from different parts of the island: Theodulus, Saturninus, Euporus, Gelasius and Eunician are associated with Gortyna itself, Zoticus with Knossos, Pompeius (also given as Pompius or Pompey) with Lebena on the south coast, Agathopus with the port of Panormos, Basilides with Cydonia (modern Chania), and Evaristus with Heraklion. They were, the synaxaria say, of good repute, and united not by kinship but by a common confession.

Martyrdom

Their sufferings fell in the general persecution decreed by the emperor Decius (reigned 249–251), the first empire-wide assault on the Church, which required every subject to sacrifice to the gods and obtain a certificate of having done so. The persecution on Crete was pressed by a governor whom the tradition also names Decius — a coincidence of name that the hagiographers underline — who took particular zeal against the Christians of Gortyna. The ten were arrested in their several towns and brought together before him.

Commanded to sacrifice, they refused with one voice. The account describes a protracted ordeal: over roughly thirty days they were paraded, mocked, scourged, stoned, dragged over rough ground, and pressed to worship Zeus, Apollo and the other gods of the island, the governor alternating threats with promises of honour. The ten answered his arguments and endured the tortures, confessing Christ and deriding the idols as lifeless. When it became plain that neither pain nor persuasion would move them, sentence of death was passed, and the ten were led out together and beheaded — the Byzantine verse for the day summing it in a line: "on the twenty-third, ten men were cut down in Crete." The martyrdom is dated to about 250. Christians of Gortyna took up the bodies and buried them with honour.

Relics and veneration

The tomb of the ten at Gortyna became the centre of their cult, and their fame spread quickly through the Greek world; portions of their relics were later distributed, and their names entered the Synaxarion of Constantinople and the Menaion, giving them a place in the universal calendar. On Crete itself their memory never lapsed: the village that grew up near the ruins of Gortyna is named Agioi Deka ("the Holy Ten") after them, and its church — with an early Christian crypt and columns traditionally shown as the block on which the martyrs were beheaded — remains their principal shrine and a place of island pilgrimage. They are venerated as the protomartyrs and patrons of Crete, the island's own company of witnesses set beside its apostolic founder Titus.

Gelasius of the ten is not to be confused with Gelasius the Martyr commemorated on June 6 — a distinct martyr of one of the general persecutions, of unknown date and province, whose notice remembers him for giving away all he had, going among the imprisoned confessors in a long white robe and kissing their wounds, and being scourged and beheaded alone. The two share only the name.