Terence of Iconium
The Holy Hieromartyr Terence, Bishop of Iconium
Hieromartyr · Bishop · d. 1st century, at Iconium in Lycaonia
Commemorated 21 June — Martyrdom by beheading at Iconium
Terence, bishop of Iconium in Lycaonia, is commemorated on June 21 as a hieromartyr of the first century — one of the earliest successors of the apostles in a see founded by the preaching of Paul and Barnabas. The whole of his surviving notice is a single line: that he governed the church of Iconium, was tortured for the confession of Christ, and was beheaded. The Slavonic books identify him with the apostle of the Seventy Tertius, the scribe who wrote out the Epistle to the Romans and who is elsewhere named second bishop of Iconium; the Greek books keep the June 21 hieromartyr under his own name and make no such equation. The identification is the one substantial question his entry raises.
The church of Iconium
Iconium (Ἰκόνιον, the modern Konya), the chief city of Lycaonia on the Anatolian plateau, is one of the very few sees whose apostolic foundation is narrated in Scripture itself. Paul and Barnabas came there from Pisidian Antioch on the first missionary journey, "and so spake that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed" (Acts 14:1), until the city was divided and they were driven out to Lystra. Paul passed through Iconium again, and the tradition of the Acts of Paul and Thecla — the earliest and most famous of the Iconian memories — sets the conversion of Thecla in that city, at the feet of the Apostle. Iconium thus had a Christian community within the apostolic generation, and a line of bishops beginning in it.
Terence belongs to that line. The synaxarion places him in the first century and gives him no consular date, no emperor, and no companions: he is remembered as the bishop of Iconium in Lycaonia who was seized for his confession, subjected to torture, and at last beheaded with the sword. Nothing further of his episcopate — no length of years, no disputes, no writings — has come down. His memory is that of the office he held and the death he died, which is exactly what the earliest strata of the calendar most often preserve of the apostolic-age bishops.
The witness of the day
The Greek Menaion for June 21 lists him third among the commemorations of the day, after the martyr Julian of Tarsus, who carries the service, and the martyr Aphrodisius: Τερεντίου ἱερομάρτυρος ἐπισκόπου Ἰκονίου. The Slavonic books give him under the doubled form "Тертий (Терентий), епископ Иконийский" — Tertius, also called Terence, bishop of Iconium — and the English calendars derived from them render him either way. The OCA's notice for the day is a single sentence: bishop of Iconium in Lycaonia in the first century, tortured and beheaded for his faith in Christ.
Feast and commemoration
June 21 (church date; New Calendar civil June 21, Old Calendar civil July 4). He is universally listed but nowhere principal: on this day the office belongs to Julian of Tarsus, and Terence is commemorated at the synaxarion reading and by the common of a hieromartyr. Greek, Slavonic and OCA usage agree in keeping him; the Slavonic books alone add the name Tertius. Since June 21 falls inside the Apostles' Fast in most years — the fast has no fixed beginning, but always ends on June 28 — his memory ordinarily lands on a fast day.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hieromartyr)
As a sharer in the ways and a successor to the thrones of the Apostles, O divinely-inspired one, thou didst find in contemplation the means to ascend to divine heights; rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst struggle for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Terence: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Terence is painted in the hierarch's type — in phelonion and omophorion, blessing with the right hand and holding the Gospel-book in the left, dark-haired and short-bearded as befits the apostolic generation — and, as a hieromartyr, may hold the small red cross of the martyrs with the Gospel. Where the Slavonic identification with the apostle Tertius is followed, he is drawn instead into the apostolic type, beardless or lightly bearded, with a scroll, and appears in the ranks of the Seventy in the menologion miniatures for October 30 and November 10 — which is why every candidate image for him has to be checked against the identity question before it is used. No pre-1900 image inscribed for the June 21 bishop of Iconium has been identified for this collection; the miniatures of Tertius among the Seventy are stored at the apostolic group entries and are deliberately not reused here, since to place one at this entry would silently decide the disputed identification.
Disputed questions
- Terence and the apostle Tertius. The Slavonic tradition treats the June 21 hieromartyr as the apostle of the Seventy Tertius, the amanuensis who names himself in Romans 16:22 ("I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord") and whom the synaxaria make second bishop of Iconium, after Sosipater, and a martyr. On that view Terentius is simply the Latin name Tertius drawn into the commoner Greek form Terentios — a slip of one letter — and the June 21 notice is a third commemoration of an apostle already kept on October 30 with Mark, Justus and Artemas, on November 10 with Olympas, Rodion, Sosipater, Erastus and Quartus, and on January 4 in the Synaxis of the Seventy. The Greek books, however, transmit the June 21 saint as a hieromartyr bishop under the name Terentios and never as an apostle of the Seventy: the two ranks are not interchangeable in the Byzantine calendar, and an apostle who is also a bishop is normally styled apostle first. The details that would settle it — the manner of death is the same (beheading), the see is the same, the century is the same — are precisely the details that would be shared by any successor in that see in that generation. This repository keeps the June 21 entry under the Greek form, records the Slavonic identification as the serious probability it is, and does not merge him into the apostolic group files, whose other members have no June 21 commemoration. Should the identification be accepted outright, this entry becomes a second feast of Tertius and not a separate saint.
- Not to be confused with the other Terences of the calendar: the martyr Terence, Neonilla and their children (October 28), a family martyred together; the martyr Terentius kept with Leontius, Dometius and Domninus; Africanus, Pompeius and Terence of Africa; and the Terence who heads the forty martyrs of Carthage. None of these is a bishop, and none belongs to Iconium.
- A see with many saints. Iconium is unusually crowded in the calendar — Thecla, Amphilochius the friend of the Cappadocians, Cornutus, Parasceva, the two Conons — and the bare notices of its earliest bishops are easily attracted to one another. The first-century date given to Terence rests on the sequence of the Iconian episcopal list and not on any independent record.