ON THE HOLY MARTYRS LUCIUS THE BISHOP AND HIS COMPANIONS, AT HADRIANOPOLIS IN THRACE.
In the year of Christ 348.
CommentaryLucius, Bishop, Martyr at Hadrianopolis (St.) Companion Martyrs at Hadrianopolis.
By G. H.
[1] When the Arian perfidy, somewhat repressed at first by the authority of Constantine the Great, raised its head under the rule of Constantius his son, grave and continual tumults beset the Church. The perfidy of the Arians, with other Catholic bishops Then (to relate only what pertains to our subject) in the year of Christ 341, the fifth from the death of Constantine, under the consuls Marcellinus and Probinus, the fourteenth indiction, in the presence of the Emperor Constantius, a conventicle was celebrated at Antioch when a new basilica was dedicated: in which Gregory the Cappadocian was thrust into the See of Alexandria, and filled that city with great slaughter in the following year 342. But St. Athanasius, having secretly escaped, fled to Rome: as he himself attests in his epistle to the Orthodox, and as Socrates reports in book 2, chapters 5 and 8, and Sozomenus in book 3, chapters 5 and 7, where he has the following: Having been driven from his see, St. Lucius resides at Rome Athanasius, fleeing from Alexandria, arrived at Rome. At the same time it happened that Paul also, Bishop of Constantinople, came there ... Likewise Lucius, Bishop of Hadrianopolis, accused by others and stripped of the Church which he governed, was residing at Rome. Hadrianopolis, moreover, is the illustrious metropolis of the province of Haemimontus in Thrace.
[2] St. Athanasius, three years after he had come to Rome, was summoned by the Emperor Constans, brother of Constantius, and came to Milan: and the matter of convening a council was discussed, and at length, with Constans and Constantius both consenting, the Synod of Sardica was convened, and held in the year 347, at which 370 bishops were present, he is restored perhaps at the Synod of Sardica most of them Catholic, some Arian: but when the latter withdrew, most of the Bishops were restored along with St. Athanasius, and perhaps among them St. Lucius, unless this had been done sooner. Sardica was in Illyricum, near the very borders of the Eastern and Western Empires, separated by an intervening mountain called Tituris from Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, to which the Arians had slipped away and held a conventicle at the same time. In it they decreed that the word Consubstantial should henceforth be used by no one with respect to Christ. But on the contrary at Sardica the Nicene faith was approved, with the heretics condemned again. These matters are pursued at greater length by Socrates, Sozomenus, and other writers of those times, and by St. Athanasius himself in his epistle to those leading the solitary life, where he subjoins the martyrdom of St. Lucius and of the other inhabitants of Hadrianopolis, with these words:
[3] The Synod, then, was dissolved in this manner. But those who had been deposed, The people of Hadrianopolis refusing to receive the Arians when it was just that they should at least be content, together with those who had withdrawn in such disgraceful flight, perpetrated deeds which make their former crimes seem trifling by comparison. For when the people of Hadrianopolis rejected their communion, as men who had fled from the Synod and were guilty, they referred the matter to
the Emperor Constantius, and brought it about that those men, from the place called the Factory, were beheaded in the manner of laymen, they are beheaded with Philagrius, again appointed as Count, administering these affairs. The monuments of this deed stand before the city, which we saw as we passed by: and they did this because they thought that in this way, lest they be considered sycophants, they could correct their flight. The Emperor indeed had ordered these things to be done thus ... As for Lucius, Bishop of Hadrianopolis, St. Lucius the Bishop dies in exile because he employed the greatest boldness against them and rebuked their impiety, they again bound his hands and neck in iron, as before, and deported him in chains into exile: and there, which is well known to them, he perished. Thus St. Athanasius, who again in his Apology to the Emperor Constantius, emphasizing the savagery of the Arians, writes thus: Whom, I ask, did they overtake in their persecution and not harass with every insult they pleased? previously imprisoned for Christ on many occasions To whom, having fallen into their hands, did they not apply such violence that he either perished miserably or was mutilated in every way? What place does not possess memorials of their savagery? What Church does not mourn their treachery? Is not ... Hadrianopolis in grief, on account of Eutropius, a man most devoted to Christ, and then on account of Lucius, who through their efforts often bore chains and died in chains? Thus St. Athanasius there, and from him Theodoret in book 2 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 15.
[4] Baronius, having related the former passage of St. Athanasius under the year 348, adds in number 3: Moreover, the birthday of Lucius, Their sacred veneration as well as of the other Martyrs of Hadrianopolis who suffered at that time, is celebrated in an anniversary commemoration on the third day before the Ides of February in the Catholic Church. On which day the Roman Martyrology has the following: At Hadrianopolis, of the holy Martyrs Lucius the Bishop and his companions; who, having suffered much under Constantius from the Arians, completed his martyrdom in chains: but the rest, the more noble of the citizens, when they refused to receive the Arians condemned at the Council of Sardica, received capital sentence from Count Philagrius. The constancy of these Martyrs, as Baronius annotates, rightly deserved to be commended to perpetual memorials by so great an authority as St. Athanasius.