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1
Valens
Aged deacon and martyr of Jerusalem, with presbyter Pamphilus and Porphyrius and companions, killed at Caesarea in Palestine, in 309.
Pamphilus, a native of Beirut, received a high education and was the presbyter in Caesarea. During the persecution of Diocletian, Pamphilus suffered torture, together with Valens, the aged deacon of the Prophet Elijah Church, and Paul, a native of Jamnia. After torture all of them were imprisoned for two years and finally were dismembered by the sword together with five young Egyptians. Porphyrius, a servant of Pamphilus, asked permission to bury the bodies. When he confessed to being a Christian, he was burned. Seleucus, a warrior, was beheaded. Theodulus, the starets (elder), was crucified on a cross. One young Christian, Julian, approaching Caesarea, saw the mutilated bodies of the martyrs, went up to them, and kissed them. Soldiers who saw this informed the governor, and when the young man confessed Christ he was burned. [16 February among the Orthodox]
2
Sanctus
Deacon and martyr, one of the Martyrs of Lyons, 177.
At Lyons (Lugdunum in Latin) and Vienne, in Gaul, there were missionary centers which drew many Christians from Asia and Greece. Persecution began in 177. At first, Christians were excluded from the public baths and the market place, and from all social and public life. They were subject to attack when they appeared in public, and many Christian homes were vandalized. At this point the government became involved and began to take Christians into custody for questioning. Some slaves from Christian households were tortured to obtain confessions and were induced to say that Christians practiced cannibalism and incest. These charges were used to arouse the whole city against the Christians, particularly against Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons; Sanctus, a deacon; Attalus; Maturus, a recent convert; and Blandina, a slave. Pothinus was beaten and then released, to die of his wounds a few days later. Sanctus was tormented with red-hot irons. Blandina, tortured all day long, would say nothing except, “I am a Christian, and nothing vile is done among us.” Finally, the survivors were put to death in the public arena.
3
Basman Yousef Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed (modern day)
Deacons and martyrs, shot and killed with priest Ragheed Ganni after Sunday mass, as they left the (Chaldean Catholic) Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul, northern Iraq, on 3 June 2007.
As they left the church, their car was stopped by a group of armed gunmen, who shot all four men and then rigged their car with explosives so that no one would dare remove their bodies. The car with the four murdered men remained in the street, bearing witness to the killings, for several hours until a police bomb-squad defused the devices. The parish where they served, the Church of the Holy Spirit, had been bombed and vandalized in the past, and Father Ganni had been threatened by Islamic militants. The three deacons had been accompanying the priest constantly, hoping to protect him.
7
Wallabonsus
Deacon and martyr of Córdoba in Spain, with companions, beheaded for publicly rebuking Mohammed, in 851.
Five Spanish martyrs—Wallabonsus, Peter, Sabinian, Wistremundus, Habentius, and Jeremias—were put to death in Córdoba at the order of Emir Abd al-Rahman II for preaching against Mohammed. Though most were beheaded, Jeremias was scourged to death.
9
Vincent of Agen
Deacon and martyr, tortured and beheaded at Agen in Gascony (southwestern France) for having disturbed a feast of the Gallic druids, 292.
Ephrem the Syrian (or Ephrem of Edessa)
Deacon, theologian, and hymn writer, died of plague on 9 June 373 (BCP June 10).
Ephrem is venerated as a saint by Christians throughout the world, and especially among Syriac Christians. He wrote a wide variety of hymns, poems, and homilies in verse, as well as prose biblical commentaries. These were works of practical theology for the edification of the church in troubled times. So popular were his works that, for centuries after his death, Christian authors wrote hundreds of pseudepigraphous works in his name. Ephrem’s works witness to an early, vibrant expression of Christian faith, little touched by the European modes of thought, and more engaged with eastern methods of discourse.
Ephrem was born around the year 306 in the city of Nisibis (the modern Turkish town of Nusaybin, on the border with Syria). Internal evidence from Ephrem’s hymnody suggests that both his parents were part of the growing Christian community in the city, although later hagiographers wrote that his father was a pagan priest. Numerous languages were spoken in the Nisibis of Ephrem’s day, mostly dialects of Aramaic. The Christian community used the Syriac dialect. Various pagan religions, Judaism, and early Christian sects vied with one another for the hearts and minds of the populace. It was a time of great religious and political tension. The Roman Emperor Diocletian had signed a treaty with his Persian counterpart Nerses in 298 that transferred Nisibis into Roman hands. The savage persecution and martyrdom of Christians under Diocletian were an important part of Nisibene church heritage as Ephrem grew up.
Jacob, the first bishop of Nisibis, was appointed in 308, and Ephrem grew up under his leadership of the community. Jacob of Nisibis is recorded as a signatory at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Ephrem was baptized as a youth and almost certainly became a son of the covenant, an unusual form of Syrian proto-monasticism. Jacob appointed Ephrem as a teacher (Syriac malp̄ānâ, a title that still carries great respect for Syriac Christians). He was ordained as a deacon either at his baptism or later. In his poems Ephrem refers to himself as a “herdsman” (’alana), a member of the shepherd-bishop's pastoral staff. At the end of his Hymns Against the Heresies Ephrem wrote of himself, saying:
O Lord, may the works of your herdsman (’alana) not be negated. I will not then have troubled your sheep, but as far as I was able, I will have kept the wolves away from them, and I will have built, as far as I was capable, Enclosures of teaching-hymns (madrāšê) for the lambs of your flock. I will have made a disciple of the simple and unlearned man, And I will have given him a strong hold on the herdsmen’s (’alone) staff, the healers’ medicine, and the disputants’ armor.
This is all that Ephrem tells us about his role in the church. It is probable that he was a deacon, but there is no early Syriac text that identifies him as such. The word (’alana) translated as “herdsman” is difficult to define precisely. Most often it is interpreted in relation to the Greek tradition simply as meaning deacon. But the normal Syriac word for deacon is mshamshono. The term (’alana) is often used to denote a disciple in relation to his master. In this instance the term expresses Ephrem’s relationship to God, which is the same relationship of Ephrem to his bishop. What inspired the Syriac writers to celebrate Ephrem as a teacher par excellence was the fame of his teaching and the holiness of his life. The same also led the hagiographers in the Greek-speaking world, and those under their influence, to fashion the image of Ephrem Byzantinus.
In 337 Emperor Constantine I, who had legalized and promoted the practice of Christianity in the Roman Empire, died. Seizing on this opportunity, Shapur II of Persia began a series of attacks into Roman North Mesopotamia. Nisibis was besieged in 338, 346, and 350. During the first siege, Ephrem credits Bishop Jacob as defending the city with his prayers. Ephrem’s beloved bishop died soon after the event, and Babu, who succeeded Jacob as bishop, led the church through the turbulent times of border skirmishes. In the third siege, of 350, Shapur rerouted the River Mygdonius to undermine the walls of Nisibis. The Nisibenes quickly repaired the walls while the Persian elephant cavalry became bogged down in the wet ground. Ephrem celebrated what he saw as the miraculous salvation of the city in a hymn which portrayed Nisibis as being like Noah’s Ark, floating to safety on the flood.
One important physical link to Ephrem’s lifetime is the baptistry of Nisibis. The inscription tells that it was constructed under Bishop Vologeses in 359. That was the year that Shapur began to harry the region once again. The cities around Nisibis were destroyed one by one, and their citizens killed or deported. The Roman Empire was preoccupied in the west, and Constantius II and Julian struggled for overall control. Eventually, with Constantius dead, Julian the Apostate began his march into Mesopotamia. He brought with him his increasingly stringent persecutions of Christians. Julian began a foolhardy march against the Persian capital, Ctesiphon, where, overstretched and outnumbered, he was forced into an immediate retreat back along the same road. Julian was killed defending his retreat, and the army elected Jovian as the new emperor.
Unlike his predecessor, Jovian was a Nicene Christian. He was forced by circumstances to ask for terms from Shapur and conceded Nisibis to Persia, with the provision that the city’s Christian community would leave. Bishop Abraham, the successor to Vologeses, led his people into exile. Ephrem found himself among a large group of refugees that fled west, first to Amida (Diyarbakır), and eventually settling in Edessa (modern Şanlıurfa) in 363. Ephrem, in his late fifties, applied himself to ministry in his new church, and seems to have continued his work as a teacher, perhaps in the School of Edessa.
Edessa had always been at the heart of the Syriac-speaking world, and the city was full of rival philosophies and religions. Ephrem comments that orthodox Nicene Christians were simply called “Palutians” in Edessa, after a former bishop. Arians, Marcionites, Manichees, Bardaisanites, and various Gnostic sects proclaimed themselves as the true church. In this confusion, Ephrem wrote a great number of hymns defending Nicene orthodoxy. A later Syriac writer, Jacob of Serugh, wrote that Ephrem rehearsed all-women choirs to sing his hymns set to Syriac folk tunes in the forum of Edessa. After a ten-year residency in Edessa, in his sixties, Ephrem succumbed to the plague as he ministered to its victims. The most reliable date for his death is 9 June 373.
Ephrem began to compose hymns and write biblical commentaries as part of his educational office. He is popularly credited as the founder of the School of Nisibis, which in later centuries was the centre of learning of the church of the East. Over four hundred hymns composed by Ephrem still exist. Granted that some have been lost, Ephrem’s productivity is not in doubt. The church historian Sozomen credits Ephrem with having written over three million lines. Ephrem combines in his writing a threefold heritage: he draws on the models and methods of early Rabbinic Judaism, he engages skillfully with Greek science and philosophy, and he delights in the Mesopotamian-Persian tradition of mystery symbolism. The most important of his works are his lyric, teaching hymns (madrāšê). These hymns are full of rich, poetic imagery drawn from biblical sources, folk tradition, and other religions and philosophies. The madrāšê are written in stanzas of syllabic verse, and employ over fifty different metrical schemes. Each madrāšâ had its qālâ, a traditional tune identified by its opening line. All of these qālê are now lost. Bardaisan and Mani had composed madrāšê, and Ephrem felt that the medium was a suitable tool to use against their claims.
The madrāšê are gathered into various hymn cycles. Each group has a title—Carmina Nisibena, On Faith, On Paradise, On Virginity, Against Heresies—but some of these titles do not do justice to the entirety of the collection (for instance, only the first half of the Carmina Nisibena is about Nisibis). Each madrāšâ usually had a refrain (‘ûnîṯâ), which was repeated after each stanza. Later writers have suggested that the madrāšê were sung by all women choirs with an accompanying lyre.
Particularly influential were his Hymns Against Heresies. Ephrem used these to warn his flock of the heresies which threatened to divide the early church. He lamented that the faithful were “tossed to and fro and carried around with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness and deceitful wiles.” He devised hymns laden with doctrinal details to inoculate right-thinking Christians against heresies such as docetism. The Hymns Against Hereies employ colorful metaphors to describe the incarnation of Christ as a fully human and divine. Ephrem asserts that Christ’s unity of humanity and divinity represents peace, perfection, and salvation; in contrast, docetism and other heresies sought to divide or reduce Christ’s nature, and in doing so would rend and devalue Christ’s followers with their false teachings.
Ephrem also wrote verse homilies (mêmrê). These sermons in poetry are far fewer in number than the madrāšê. The mêmrê are written in a heptosyllabic couplets (pairs of lines of seven syllables each).
The third category of Ephrem’s writings is his prose work. He wrote biblical commentaries on the Diatessaron (the single gospel harmony of the early Syriac church), on Genesis and Exodus, and on the Acts of the Apostles and Pauline epistles. He also wrote refutations against Bardaisan, Mani, Marcion, and others. Ephrem wrote exclusively in the Syriac language, but translations of his writings exist in Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Greek, and other languages. Some of his works are only extant in translation (particularly in Armenian).
Syriac churches still use many of Ephrem’s hymns as part of the annual cycle of worship. Most of these liturgical hymns are edited and conflated versions of the originals. The most complete, critical text of authentic Ephrem was compiled between 1955 and 1979 by Dom Edmund Beck, OSB, as part of the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum
14
Anastasius
Deacon and martyr of Córdoba, Spain, beheaded in 853.
A deacon of the church of Saint Acisclus in Córdoba, Anastasius became a Benedictine monk at the double monastery of Tábanos nearby. He was beheaded by order of the caliph with the monk Felix and the nun Digna, at Córdoba, 853.
16
Ferrutio
Deacon and martyr, with his brother the presbyter Ferreolus, natives of Asia Minor, killed at Vesontio in Gaul, c. 212.
The brothers were sent by Irenaeus of Lyons (who had ordained them) to evangelize the country around Vesontio (present-day Besançon in Franche-Comté), where they worked for 30 years. They were tortured and beheaded during the persecution of Severus. According to Gregory of Tours in the 6th century, their relics cured Gregory’s brother-in-law of distemper. The relics are still treasured in the cathedral of Besançon.
Colman McRoi
Deacon, disciple of Columba of Iona (Colum Cille), and founder and abbot of an abbey at Reachrain, now Lambay Island, Dublin, died 6th c.
19
Culmatius
Deacon and martyr, with his bishop Gaudentius, layman Andrew and his wife and children, and 53 companions, killed for their catholic faith by the Arians in Arezzo in Tuscany, during the reign of Valentinian I, 364.
20
Demetrian
Deacon and martyr, with presbyter Aristocleus and reader Athanasius, beheaded at Cyprus, in 306.
Aristocleus, a native of the Cypriot city of Tamasa, served in the cathedral during the persecution under the emperor Maximian Galerius (305-311). He became terrified of the tortures, left the city, and hid in a mountain cave. Once during prayer a light shone on him, and he heard a command from the Lord to return to the island of Cyprus and suffer for Christ. Aristocleus obediently set out to return, and on the way he visited the church of the apostle Barnabas, where he met Demetrian and Athanasius. He told them of his vision, and Demetrian and Athanasius decided to endure martyrdom with him. Arriving in the city of Salamis, all three began to preach to the people about Jesus Christ and denounced idol-worship. The pagans arrested them, and the governor, seeing that they were steadfast in their faith, gave orders to behead Aristocleus, and to burn Demetrian and Athanasius. Even in the fire, they remained unharmed, but they were beheaded by sword.
27
Arialdus, also called Arialdo
Ddeacon and martyr, persecuted and killed by allies of the archbishop of Milan, on 27 June 1066.
A noble of the Alciati family, born in Cutiacum, Italy, Arialdus studied at Laon and Paris before becoming a canon. He was leader of the patari, a popular reform movement, whose members assembled in the Pataria or ragmen’s quarter of Milan (pates being a dialectal word for “rags”). He preached against the abuses of the clergy and was excommunicated by Archbishop Guido but reinstated by Pope Stephen IX. Arialdus procured the excommunication of Guido for simony and immorality, but Guido ignored the decree. Guido’s allies tortured and killed Arialdus and threw his body into Lake Maggiore. The body was recovered ten months later, uncorrupt and sweet smelling, and carried to the cathedral in Milan, where it remained on public display before being buried in the cathedral. In 1067 Pope Alexander II declared Arialdus a martyr.
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