ON SS. ARTEMIDORUS AND THALES, OR THALELÆUS, MARTYRS,
VENERATED AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
From the calendars of the Greeks.
CommentaryArtemidorus, martyr, venerated at Constantinople. (S.)
Thales or Thalelæus, martyr, venerated at Constantinople. (S.)
BY J. S.
[1] The memory of these Martyrs Two Martyrs are recorded today in a few of the calendars of the Greeks and most briefly, so that at first I suspected that they had been torn away from their own proper day, and were announced more celebratedly on another day, either both together or each separately. Yet after a sufficiently diligent inquiry I have not been able to find that these Martyrs belong to another day, or that they are the same as those of the same name commemorated on other days. Wherefore I shall briefly give the few things which I find about them among the Greeks. The printed Menæa have this today: Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ, τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων, Αρτεμιδώρου καὶ Θαλοῦ. On the same day, of the holy martyrs Artemidorus and Thales. Presently these two verses follow: Αρτεμίδωρον καὶ Θαλὼν * κτείνει ξίφος, Μὴ προσκυνοῦντας Ἄρτεμιν ξενοκτόνον.
The sword kills Artemidorus and Thales,
who do not adore Diana the slayer of strangers.
The verses indicate that the Saints were killed with the sword because they were unwilling to show worship to Diana. And she is called the slayer of strangers by an allusion to the Tauric Diana, to whom, if we believe the poets, strangers were sacrificed.
[2] Moreover, that the aforesaid Martyrs are venerated among the Greeks, or at least were once venerated, and their cult at Constantinople. is clear from the Constantinopolitan Synaxary which is kept in the College of Louis the Great at Paris, and was long since communicated to our elders. For in it they are announced today, and the place where they were venerated is assigned; but Thales is there called Thalelæus and is placed in the first position. The Greek words I transfer hither: Μνήμη τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Θαλελαίου καὶ Αρτεμιδωρου· τελεῖται δὲ ἡ αὐτῶν σύναξις ἐν τῷ μαρτυρείῳ αὐτῶν, τῷ ὄντι ἔνδον τοῦ ἁγίου Θεοδώρου, ἐν τῷ Κοσμιδίῳ. The memory of the holy martyrs Thalelæus and Artemidorus. And their assembly is held in their own martyry, which is within the church of St. Theodore in the Cosmidium. Greek writers call Cosmidium the monastery of SS. Cosmas and Damian outside Constantinople, about which Du Cange may be consulted in Constantinopolis Christiana, book 4, page 182. That the monastery was a very ample one is abundantly clear from what Du Cange has from various writers. And so within the enclosure of that monastery there must have been some church sacred to St. Theodore, as there were several at Constantinople; and in that church there must have been a chapel or altar dedicated to SS. Thalelæus and Artemidorus, where probably their relics had been laid, and in which the festival was performed. Maximus, bishop of Cythera, records the same Martyrs, naming them Artemidorus and Thales, and only repeating the words of the Menæa.
Annotation* read Θαλὴν