ON THE HOLY CONSTANTINOPOLITAN MARTYRS
URBANUS, THEODORUS, MENEDEMUS, AND LXXVII PRESBYTERS, CLERICS, LAYMEN.
A.D. CCCLXX.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
The cult among the Greeks, the Acts from Socrates, the time of the martyrdom.
Urbanus, Constantinopolitan Martyr (St.)
Theodorus, Constantinopolitan Martyr (St.)
Menedemus, Constantinopolitan Martyr (St.)
LXXVII, Constantinopolitan Presbyters, Clerics, Laymen, Martyrs (SS.)
D. P.
[1] A very ancient MS. Synaxarium of the Church of Constantinople, which belongs to the College Clermont of the Society of Jesus at Paris, these holy Martyrs to us on XVIII May thus brings forward: The sacred cult, Καὶ ἄθλησις τῶν ἁγίων Μαρτύρον Κληρικῶν καὶ λαἳκῶν · οὺς Οὐάλης ὁ ἀσεβὴς ἐν πλοίῳ ἐμβαλὼν τῷ πυρὶ κατέκαυσε πλησίον Δακυβίζης. And the contest of the holy Martyrs, Clerics & laymen, whom Valens the impious put into a ship, with fire burned, near Dacybiza.
[2] The deed Socrates describes at length book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History chapter 13 in these words: The Emperor Valens, to Antioch hastening to go, departs from Constantinople: who when he had come to Nicomedia of Bithynia, there for a time tarries… Then at Constantinople the Arians began to take greater spirits, On account of the savagery of the Arians, & those who of the Church were by beating, by afflicting with contumelies, by casting into prison, by mulcting with money, & finally every kind of incommodities, which were plainly intolerable, on them imposing, most grievously to harass began. They when these things to bear could not, the Emperor to entreat go, that if not altogether, yet in some part from the violence of the Arians they might be freed. But that revolving in mind, far from opinion they erred; especially since from him their right they hoped to obtain, who of the injuries brought on them had been the author. For when men of the Ecclesiastical order, eighty in number, for that matter chosen (among whom the chief place held Urbanus, Theodorus, & Menedemus) to Nicomedia came, the Emperor as suppliants prayed, sent to Nicomedia to the Emperor Valens. the violence to themselves brought showed, & the incommodities which from the Arians they had received to him set forth; he, although with wrath he was beyond measure inflamed against them, so far yet it concealed, until to Modestus the Prefect secretly he had given the mandate, that those apprehended with death he should mulct. The kind of death, since it was new & foreign, worth the trouble I judge with letters to the memory of posterity to commend. The Prefect greatly fearing, lest if those openly & in the eyes of all he slaughtered, the multitude with a rash impetus incited, against him seditiously should rise, feigns that he would send them into exile. They the matter with a lofty & erect mind bear. put into a ship then set on fire, The Prefect therefore orders them to be put into a ship, just as if into exile straightway they were led: to the sailors however he gives in mandate, that when to the middle of the sea it had been come, the ship they should set on fire, that in this manner those departing from life, might not have any who should commit them to burial. So therefore it was done. For the sailors to the middle of the sea Astacenum carried, do the commanded things: & they themselves the ship being set on fire, the skiff which followed boarding return. By chance fortune the east wind heavily blows, & the ship already set on fire so vehemently drives, that with a most swift course through the sea it glided, & so far endured, until at the navale, which Dacidizes is called, it should arrive: where, together with those pious men, at last wholly consumed it was. In frequent speech among many it is asserted, carried near Dacybiza, they are submerged, this cruel & impious deed by no means unavenged was. For straightway after a most bitter famine through the whole Phrygia spread, so that very many inhabitants of that region, in a small space of time by necessity driven, both to Constantinople, & to other provinces fled.
[3] These things Socrates, which more briefly described Nicephorus book 11 chapter 16. The same things also reports Sozomen book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History chapter 14, where similarly eighty men Ecclesiastical are said to have been sent, who a libellus, in which their postulates they had written, to Valens the Emperor delivered. Then he says, the ship by a favorable wind driven to Dacybiza, which is a place of that part of Bithynia which to the sea is adjacent, to the port arrives; which as soon as it touched land, together with those very men by the flames consumed perished. by Theodoret held to be Presbyters & Martyrs, Theodoret the same history not sufficiently distinctly narrates book 4 chapter 21, while thus he writes: At Constantinople, the Arians, a ship with pious Presbyters filled, without ballast into the deep drove: then of their own some on another ship being placed they ordered, that the Presbyters' ship they should set on fire. Which done, with fire & sea struggling, at last into the deep submerged, the crown of martyrdom they obtained. praised by St. Gregory Nazianzen. To these Martyrs alludes St. Gregory Nazianzen in the Oration to the Arians, while addressing them among other things thus he perorates; Which Presbyters did fire & water, elements among themselves contrary, divide, in a new & unheard-of manner shining before those sailing, & at the same time with that ship in which they had set sail blazing?
[4] There happened the aforesaid journey of the Emperor Valens in the year CCCLXX, Valentinian & Valens being Augusti Consuls for the third time, Crowned in the year 374. & in the month of May that he was at Nicomedia we gather, because from this city having set out for Cyzicus, in the same place the law XVII, "Whose appeals," to the above-mentioned Modestus, then made Prefect of the Praetorium, he gave on the IV Ides of June. There were therefore of the already related Martyrs some Presbyters, as Nazianzen & Theodoret call them, others Clerics, or Ecclesiastics, & some Laymen, as is added in the MS. Synaxarium, & these perhaps of other more honorable ones servants: but submerged near Dacybiza, to Socrates Dacidizes a port of Bithynia.