ON STS. SERGIUS AND STEPHEN, MARTYRS.
Their cult from the Greek Calendars.
Sergius, Martyr, among the Greeks (S.)
Stephen, Martyr, among the Greeks (S.)
J. P.
These two holy Martyrs we give on this day, the XII of August, on which the great printed Menæa of the Greeks mark them, The great printed Menæa celebrate them on this day; in which these words are said: On the same day Sts. Sergius and Stephen are consummated in peace; two verses being added:
For Sergius and Stephen, equal in their sweat, Equal crowns await. For thus indeed it is fitting.
The poet alludes to the proper name of Stephen and to the common noun στέφανος, which means a crown.
[2] We give them, I say, on this day with the said Menæa, but on the following day they are recorded elsewhere. although elsewhere they occur at the XIII of this month. For in our Sirmond-Chifflet Supplement to the same Menæa, they are then announced thus: "On the same day, the holy Sergius and Stephen, being cast into the mill/mole, are consummated." For "the mole" perhaps should be read "the mill," that is, a millstone, or "the mill-house," that is, a bakery or grinding-house; and accordingly I thus interpret the announcement adduced: On the same day the holy Sergius and Stephen, being cast into a mill-house, are consummated. In the same place the two verses above are appended, but with a slight transposition of one word. I said "perhaps it should be so read": for μόλος signifies, in barbarous Greek, a harbor, a mole, or a jetty running out into the sea, by which a harbor is fortified and enclosed, on the testimony of Du Cange in his barbarous-Greek Glossary. The Menæon of Chifflet on the same day, the XIII, sets them down thus: "Sergius and Stephen, martyrs." In our Greek transcripts, which were excerpted from the manuscript Menæa of the Ambrosian library, on that day Bacchus is substituted in the place of Stephen: for thus I read there: "Of the holy Sergius and Bacchus." More things to add concerning the time, life, and place of the martyrdom I have not at hand. Nor is it ascertained by me whether the cited Ambrosian transcripts meant in passing to indicate Sergius and Bacchus, of whom the great Menæa as well as the Roman Martyrology treat at the day VII of October.