ON ST. ALEXANDER, MARTYR AT THESSALONICA,
AT AN UNCERTAIN TIME
CommentaryAlexander, martyr at Thessalonica. (S.)
H. D.
[1] Various commemorations of St. Alexander. St. Alexander of Thessalonica has been mentioned in our work more than once, but only in passing, when on 27 February and on 13 and 14 March the memory of this holy martyr occurred in the Hieronymian martyrologies Act. SS., Feb. vol. III, p. 676; Mar. vol. II, pp. 262, 346.. Of those three entries of the martyrology the third is to be retained, which commemorates the natal day of St. Alexander. For on 14 March he was inscribed in the Eastern martyrology, whose remains the Syriac epitome has preserved: Ἐν Θεσσαλονίχῃ Φρόντων μάρτυς καὶ ἕτεροι τρεῖς. The three companions, of whom Alexander is one, are enumerated by the Hieronymian martyrology. For what reason, in the more recent fasti of the Greeks, 9 November was assigned to him Synax. Eccl. CP., p. 208. we confess we do not know. In very truth, in the synaxaria at 14 March, or at the neighbouring 13th, is read the elogium of a certain martyr Alexander τοῦ ἐν Πύδνῃ Ibid., p. 535., so composed that he is judged to have had nothing in common with the Thessalonian except the name. Following the opinions of the Greek hagiographers, our predecessors published in its place a commentary on St. Alexander in Pydna, adding Latin Acts BHL. 280. which in the codices are entitled Passion of St. Alexander, martyr [So in the codices Brussels 207–208, fol. 146v; Farfa 29, fol. 136; Ivrea 112, fol. 66.]; these, however, do not distinctly report the place where he suffered: that contest was fought out in the middle of Macedonia and Thessaly In the codices our predecessors used, Thessalonicae was read.. The writer of the Latin Passion followed a Greek exemplar, which we regret has perished. Its traces, however, survive in the synaxaria, and indeed in the elogia of St. Alexander of Thessalonica at 9 November. A very succinct epitome we published from the Sirmond codex Synax. Eccl. CP., p. 208.. Of much greater moment is the one which the so-called Menologion of Basil provides. This we now give from the celebrated codex Vaticanus graecus 1613, fol. 170, to be compared with the Latin Passion.
[2] Synaxarion. Μηνὶ τῷ αὐτῷ θ᾽. Ἄθλησις τοῦ ἁγίου μάρτυρος Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ ἐν Θεσσαλονίχῃ.
Greek text only in the Acta; the English here is translated from the Greek.
Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ μάρτυς ὑπῆρχεν ἐπὶ Μαξιμιανοῦ τοῦ βασιλέως· καὶ κρατηθεὶς ἠναγκάσθη θῦσαι τοῖς. εἰδώλοις. Ὁ δὲ μὴ πεισθεὶς ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον θείῳ ζήλῳ κινηθεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν τὴν τράπεζαν τῶν θυσιῶν ἱσταμένην, ὥρμησε καὶ τῷ ποδὶ κρούσας, ἀνέτρεψεν αὐτὴν καὶ τὰς θυσίας ἐξέχεε. Καὶ ὀργισθεὶς ὁ Μαξιμιανὸς ἔδωκε τὴν κατ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἀπόφασιν τοῦ διὰ ξίφους ἀποθανεῖν. Καὶ λαβὼν αὐτὸν ὁ σπεκουλάτωρ καὶ ἐκβαλὼν τὸ ξίφος πρὸς τὸ ἀποκεφαλίσαι, ἴστατο ἐκπεπληγμένος. Καὶ εἶπεν ὁ βασιλεὺς πρὸς αὐτόν · “Τί ἕστηκας καὶ οὐ πληροῖς τὸ προσταχθέν σοι;” Ὁ δὲ ἔφη · “Ὀπτασίαν θεωρῶ καί εἰμι ἔντρομος.” Αἰτησάμενος δὲ ὁ ἅγιος ὥραν προσευχῆς καὶ λαβὼν ηὔξατο · καὶ εὐθέως ἐπλήγη ὑπὸ τοῦ σπεκουλάτορος. Εἶδε δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς τέσσαρας ἀγγέλους ὀψικεύοντας τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ ἁγίου. Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δέδωκε τοῖς αἰτησαμένοις θάψαι τὸ λείψανον αὐτοῦ ἐν πόλει Θεσσαλονίκῃ.
In the same month, the 9th. The contest of the holy martyr Alexander of Thessalonica. Alexander the martyr lived under the emperor Maximian; and having been seized he was compelled to sacrifice to the idols. But he, not persuaded, but rather moved by divine zeal, and seeing the table of the sacrifices standing there, rushed forward and, striking it with his foot, overturned it and poured out the sacrifices. And Maximian, enraged, gave sentence against him that he should die by the sword. And the speculator, taking him and drawing the sword to behead him, stood astounded. And the emperor said to him: "Why do you stand there and not carry out what was commanded you?" And he said: "I see a vision and I am trembling." The saint, having asked for an hour of prayer and having received it, prayed; and at once he was struck by the speculator. And the emperor saw four angels escorting the soul of the saint. And for this reason he granted to those who asked leave to bury his relics in the city of Thessalonica.
[3] Alexander of Pydna seems to be one and the same That both those Acts which are transmitted in summary by the synaxarists and the Latin ones which have been assigned to Alexander of Pydna flowed, not indeed from the same copy, but in the end from one Greek source, there is no reason to demonstrate at length. For on both sides, under the same reigning emperor, for the same cause, in plainly similar circumstances, the martyr was slain by the same punishment too, and his body, granted by the emperor to those who asked for it, was buried at Thessalonica. Those Latin Acts, therefore, were of Alexander of Thessalonica, not of Pydna, if indeed the one is to be distinguished from the other, which at least does not seem so to us. For if
there is faith in the hagiographer in this matter, Alexander was indeed buried at Thessalonica, yet suffered in another place. Why not at Pydna? Grant that the deeds of the martyr which the synaxarist excerpted for 14 March were plainly different from those he used for 9 November. From these one thing alone is gathered: that the opinion about two Alexanders who suffered in Macedonia is older than the 10th century. and the Thessalonian. That there was only one, famous through the veneration of the Thessalonians, is probable to us.
[4] There was a church at Thessalonica, ναὸς ἀστεῖος καὶ οὐκ ἀνάξιος λόγου, as Bishop Eustathius witnesses BHG. 63, n. 3., dedicated to Saints Alphaeus, Zosimus and Alexander. That these holy martyrs were brothers the same Eustathius asserts, smiths born at Calytus in Pisidia. And he wrote a laudation of the Calytene martyrs, whose deeds he asserts he had read in three books. But, what may well surprise you, in the oration itself he gives no names besides those of Mark, Nico, Neon and Heliodorus, which accordingly seem to be the only ones he found in the deeds of the martyrs; the rest he calls by the common name of Calytenes; of Alexander, Alpheus and Zosimus not so much as a word. That the church had been dedicated to Alexander, not the Calytene but the Thessalonian, together with the others, and that for this reason he was wrongly counted among the Calytenes by Eustathius, is no empty conjecture.