Thespesius of Cappadocia
The Holy Martyr Thespesius of Cappadocia
Martyr · d. c. 222–230, Cappadocia
Commemorated 1 June — Beheaded outside the city under the governor Simplicius
Thespesius — a Greek name meaning "divinely-uttered," and so apt to a martyr that the synaxaria remark on it — was a Christian of Cappadocia who suffered under the emperor Alexander Severus, about the year 222. Arrested by the provincial governor Simplicius for confessing Christ and brought to a temple to sacrifice, he mocked the idols to the governor's face. He was hung up and his flesh torn, plunged into boiling water, and shut for two days in a cauldron of seething oil, pitch and fat, from all of which he came out unhurt; and many pagans, the account says, were converted by the sight. He was at last beheaded outside the city, and is commemorated on June 1.
The record of Thespesius is a short synaxarion notice, and this entry does not pretend to more.
He was a Cappadocian, of that hard upland province whose towns furnished the Church so many martyrs in the third century and so many fathers in the fourth, and he lived in the reign of Alexander Severus (222–235) — an emperor personally tolerant of Christians, under whom nevertheless local governors continued to enforce the sacrifice-test when a Christian was denounced to them. His confession was accordingly a provincial affair, not part of a general edict.
He was seized by the governor of Cappadocia, whom the notice names Simplicius, and required to sacrifice in an idol-temple. Instead he derided the images, arguing that what men had made with their hands could not be gods. For this he was tortured with the customary escalation of the Roman assizes:
- he was hung up and his sides torn with hooks;
- he was thrown into boiling water, and came out unharmed;
- he was shut up for two days in a cauldron of boiling oil, pitch and fat, and took no harm from it either.
The synaxarion adds the detail that most concerned the compilers: many of the Greeks who watched believed in Christ on account of his endurance, so that the tortures intended to unmake a Christian made others. The governor, unable to move him and unwilling to go on multiplying converts, at last had him led outside the city and beheaded; and so he received the martyr's crown, about the year 222.
Feast and commemoration
Thespesius is commemorated on June 1 (church date; New Calendar civil June 1, Old Calendar civil June 14). The Greek Menaion and Synaxaristes enter him second on the day, after Justin the Philosopher, and the Greek books are effectively the only witness: the Slavic calendars and the OCA day-list omit him, and the Antiochian Menaion does not keep him. No proper hymnography is appointed; he is sung in the commons of a martyr where he is commemorated at all.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Thespesius, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Thespesius has no developed iconography of his own. Where he is painted at all — in menologion cycles for June and in the calendar-icons of the Greek and Slavonic Menaia — he takes the standard type of the young lay martyr: beardless or lightly bearded, in tunic and mantle, holding the cross of his confession, and sometimes a martyr's crown. The instruments of his passion would supply an obvious narrative attribute, and in the rare cycle that gives him one he stands in or beside a cauldron over a fire, unhurt, in the manner in which the Church paints the boiled martyrs; the beheading outside the city walls closes the sequence.
No pre-1900 image of him has been located for this collection, and none is likely to exist independently of a menologion page: the Menologion of Basil II, the first resort for minor saints, covers only September to February and therefore cannot serve a June commemoration.
Disputed questions
- The year. The Greek notice attaches him to the reign of Alexander Severus and the Greek day-list gives 222, the first year of that reign; the reign itself ran to 235, so any year within it is possible and only the reign is really transmitted.
- Not to be confused with Thespesius of Nicaea (†312), one of the three martyr brothers Eustathius, Thespesius and Anatolius of Gangra, baptised by St Anthimus of Nicomedia and put to death at Nicaea, who are commemorated on November 20. That Thespesius is a Galatian of the Diocletianic persecution with two brothers; this one is a Cappadocian of a century earlier who suffered alone. The similarity of name and the shared repertoire of tortures make the confusion easy, and some derivative day-lists have merged them.
- The name. Θεσπέσιος is an adjective before it is a name — "speaking as a god," hence "divine," "wondrous" — and the Greek synaxarists play on it. It is not a title but his given name, and it is borne by several other men in the hagiographic record, including a fourth-century presbyter of Antioch mentioned by the historians.