Trophimus and Eucarpion
The Holy Martyrs Trophimus and Eucarpion of Nicomedia
Martyr · b. at Nicomedia — d. c. 300, at Nicomedia
Commemorated 18 March — Martyrdom by fire at Nicomedia under Diocletian
Trophimus and Eucarpion (died c. 300) were soldiers of Nicomedia in the reign of the emperor Diocletian, commissioned to hunt down and arrest the Christians of the city in the great persecution. According to their martyrdom, while they were engaged in this pitiless work a vision of divine light and a heavenly voice overtook them, and the two persecutors were converted on the spot: renouncing their commission, they confessed Christ, gave themselves up in place of those they had been sent to seize, and were put to death by fire. The Church keeps their memory on March 18, together with the other martyrs of the day.
The soldiers of Nicomedia
Trophimus and Eucarpion were soldiers — in some accounts of a corps charged with the hunting-out of Christians — in Nicomedia, the eastern capital of the emperor Diocletian (284–305) and the storm-centre of the last and fiercest of the pagan persecutions, from which the twenty thousand martyrs burned in the cathedral on the Nativity (kept December 28) and a host of others of the city's martyrology went to their deaths. To such men as Trophimus and Eucarpion was committed the grim task of searching out the faithful, seizing them, and dragging them before the tribunals.
The conversion of the persecutors
As they went about this work — so the martyrdom relates — the two soldiers were suddenly arrested by a manifestation from heaven: a light beyond the light of day, and a voice that turned them from their cruelty and opened their eyes to the truth of the faith they had been persecuting. The wonder worked in them a complete conversion. They cast away their arms and their commission, confessed themselves servants of Christ, and, so far from betraying the Christians, offered their own lives — the hunters become of one company with the hunted. It is the pattern the Church loves to recall, of grace overtaking the persecutor in the very act, as it overtook Saul on the road to Damascus and the soldiers who guarded so many of the martyrs.
Martyrdom
Seized now as Christians themselves, Trophimus and Eucarpion confessed Christ before the magistrates and, refusing to sacrifice, were condemned and given to the fire, in which they yielded up their souls and received the crown of martyrdom, about the year 300. The Greek synaxarion names them with "those with them" (καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτοῖς), remembering that others of Nicomedia shared their confession and their death.
Feast and commemoration
Trophimus and Eucarpion are kept on March 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 31), within Great Lent, their office sung with the Lenten services and with the other commemorations of the day — Cyril of Jerusalem and the Ten Thousand Martyrs. Their names appear in the Greek, Slavic, and Antiochian synaxaria of the day, the companion Eucarpion also written Eucarpus or Eucarpius. They are distinct from the other martyr-pairs named Trophimus in the calendar — Trophimus and Thalus of Laodicea (March 11), Trophimus, Sabbatius and Dorymedon (September 19), and Trophimus and Theophilus of Lycia with thirteen companions (July 23), as from the apostle Trophimus of the Seventy (April 15).
Iconography
The two are depicted as martyrs and as young soldiers: beardless or lightly bearded men, holding the cross of martyrdom and sometimes shown still in the military dress (the short tunic and cloak) that marks their former calling, or in the plain garments of confessors. Where the narrative is shown, they appear amid flames, the manner of their death, or at the moment of their conversion, turned toward a heavenly light.
No public-domain image identified as Trophimus and Eucarpion has been located (the Menologion of Basil II covers only September–February); the entry carries an iconographic description only, and an icon is wanting.