Zacchaeus and Alphaeus
The Holy Martyrs Zacchaeus the Deacon and Alphaeus the Reader
Martyr · Deacon · d. 303
Commemorated 18 November — Martyrdom at Caesarea in Palestine
Zacchaeus and Alphaeus were among the first martyrs of the Great Persecution in Palestine, put to death at Caesarea in the year 303. Zacchaeus was a deacon of the church of Gadara who confessed Christ openly and would not renounce him under torture; Alphaeus, a reader of the church of Caesarea, seeing crowds of the lapsed on their way to sacrifice, publicly begged them not to defile themselves with the idols and was seized for it. Shackled together and thrown into prison, where they spent the night in prayer, the two were beheaded the next morning. They are commemorated together on November 18.
The martyrdom of Zacchaeus and Alphaeus belongs to the opening of the persecution that Diocletian and his colleagues launched in 303, and it is set at Caesarea in Palestine — the metropolis whose bishop's library and archive would soon give the Church, through Eusebius, its fullest contemporary record of these sufferings.
Zacchaeus was a deacon of the church of Gadara, one of the cities of the Decapolis east of the Jordan. Arrested in the first fury of the persecution, he confessed his faith without wavering and did not renounce Christ though he was put to torture. The persecution was so severe that many failed under it and, terrified of the torments, consented to sacrifice to the gods.
It was against this apostasy that Alphaeus acted. A reader of the church of Caesarea — one of the minor clergy, appointed to read the Scriptures in the assembly — and burning with zeal for the glory of God, he approached a crowd of those who had fallen away as they were making their way to offer the pagan sacrifice, and urged them not to defile themselves with the impious rites. For this he was arrested, and after tortures he was bound together with the deacon Zacchaeus. The two were cast into prison for the night, where they prayed without ceasing and strengthened one another to endure everything for the name of Christ. In the morning they were beheaded together, confessing Christ to the end.
Feast and commemoration
November 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil December 1), within the Nativity Fast. The pair are kept on this day in the Byzantine synaxaria, sharing the service of the day with the Martyrs Plato and Romanus. Eusebius's Martyrs of Palestine records their deaths among the earliest of that persecution, which some readers place at its very beginning.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee, our God; for, possessed of Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their prayers, O Christ God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
Zacchaeus and Alphaeus would be depicted as martyrs of the early Church — Zacchaeus in the deacon's sticharion and orarion, Alphaeus as a young reader — each holding the cross of martyrdom, as is usual for a pair of confessors of the same day. No identity-verified pre-modern image of the pair has been secured for this entry.
Disputed questions
- Zacchaeus the deacon of Gadara is not the publican Zacchaeus of the Gospel (Luke 19), who climbed the sycamore at Jericho and is reckoned among the Seventy in some traditions; the two are distinct persons of different centuries.
- Alphaeus the reader of Caesarea is not to be confused with Alphaeus the Apostle of the Seventy, of Capernaum, commemorated on May 26, who was father of the Apostle James son of Alphaeus (and, in one tradition, of the Evangelist Matthew); the shared name is a coincidence.