VICTOR OF MARSEILLES

Saint Victor of Marseilles (+ca. 290) is one of the so-called culture-forming saints. A huge layer of ancient Orthodox Christian civilization was formed upon his name, memory, and veneration. In this regard, he is similar to the ancient martyrs, his contemporaries - St. George, St Catherine of Alexandria, St Menas or St Mauritius.

Victor’s martyrdom is connected with the spread of apostolic Christianity in Southern Gaul, where, according to local tradition, after Pentecost, St. Mary Magdalene and even Lazarus, whom Scripture calls “the friend of Jesus” (cf. John 11:1), preached the Gospel. Traces of this initial evangelization, as often happened in territories remote from the Apostolic Churches, had been erased by the time of St Victor.

The information that has been preserved about the saint is very sparse, but consistent and clear in its plausibility. Victor was a warrior, an officer of the Roman army. A difficult period in the history of the city of Marseilles in the last quarter of the 3rd century was then marked by the search for those responsible for public disasters. The people were required to unite in the name of pagan deities. The same was demanded from the army. For refusing to comply, Victor was arrested and imprisoned. Then, in prison, he converted three of his guards to faith in Christ.

During the ensuing trial, he, with a secret intention, suddenly expressed a desire to honor the idols. But during a pagan ceremony, he deliberately trampled the altar of the idol of Zeus with his foot. As punishment, the martyr was placed between two millstones and crushed to death. The bodies of Victor and the three guards he converted were thrown into the sea, but were recovered by Christians and buried in the quarries, where they secretly gathered to celebrate the Eucharist.

At the beginning of the 4th century, the Roman emperor Diocletian began a consistent extermination of Christians, which went down in history under the name of the Great Persecution (303-313). In the menologions, this period left its precious mark in the names of the martyrs who drank the cup of suffering together. “A martyr with his companions” is a common description for saints of that era. However, the martyrdom of Victor and the guards he converted was not collective and numerous.

Apparently, Saint Victor suffered during the earlier period of the reign of Diocletian and Maximian (285-305), when Christians were accused and persecuted selectively and individually. Thus, in his testimony of faith, he alone preceded the great multitude of saints who were subsequently destined to join the brotherhood of martyrdom in the Great Persecution. Thus, like John the Baptist before the face of the Lord, he became the “harvester of sorrow” and the “firstborn of suffering.”

The Father of the Desert John Cassian (360-435) arrived in Marseille in 415 and founded a monastery in the name of Saint Victor. Seven centuries later, in 1113 the monastery of St. Victor was erected in Paris. In the Middle Ages, as a center of theological learning, this Parisian monastery was very famous. Thus, the veneration of the saint acquired a universal dimension.

Unfortunately, during the period of the Dark Ages and the migration of peoples, the Churches, scattered across the Universe, ceased to preserve mutual memory of their traditions. The Western Latin Churches were often involved in the aggressive policy of local secular sovereigns towards the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. Therefore, many ancient saints of the Christian West, whose memory and whose Orthodoxy are undoubted, never found proper veneration in the East. That is why Saint Victor was not included in subsequent Orthodox liturgical calendars.

This omission was corrected in 2017. Then, following the path of the great defender for the veneration of the forgotten ancient saints of the ancient Christian West, our contemporary John of Shanghai (1896-1966), the Holy Synod of the Russian Church in 2017 included the name of St. Victor in the liturgical calendar. His memory in our menologion is celebrated on August 3 (July 21) on the day of his heavenly birth, as the first Christians called the days of the martyrdom of the saints.