GREAT MARTYR PROCOPIUS

On July 21 (8), when the Russian Church solemnly celebrates the appearance of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in 1579 in the city of Kazan, the liturgical calendar honors the memory of the great saint of Christian antiquity—the martyr Procopius. Orthodox tradition calls him the Great Martyr.

A witness and contemporary of his life, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (265–339), tells about Procopius and his martyrdom in his work “On the Palestinian Martyrs.” According to Eusebius, in April 303, the nineteenth of his reign, Emperor Diocletian issued several successive decrees to persecute Christians.

In the first of the decrees, the Ruler of Palestine, Flavius, was ordered to destroy existing Christian churches to the ground and burn sacred books. Christians invested with positions were ordered to be deprived of their titles, and private individuals to be imprisoned. Subsequent documents, this time directed against the servants of the Church, ordered that they be imprisoned and forced in every possible way to make sacrifices to the gods. In Eusebius’s story, a special place is devoted to events in Palestine.

Initially, Jerusalem was the Mother of Churches and the see of the brother of God, the Apostle James. However, in 70 the city was completely destroyed by the Romans. Warned of the coming catastrophe, the Christians then left the city, and the first apostolic see thus ceased to exist. Once the Mother of Churches, the Jerusalem Church tragically lost the community that descended from the Apostles. Formally, it ceased to exist and, as it were, lost its apostolic succession. But Christianity continued to live in other cities of Palestine.

In 135, the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina was founded on the site of Jerusalem. Although, according to Tradition, a bishop with a small number of faithful Christians always resided on the site of the former Holy City in the first centuries of Christianity, the city of Elia was full of idols. In turn, the largest cities in Palestine at that time were Caesarea, Scythopolis and Petra. It is important that it was with Caesarea, in addition to Alexandria, that the activity of the great ancient theologian and interpreter of Scripture Origen (185–254) was connected. This gave the city a special sacred globality. Therefore, the steadfastness in the faith of the local community was extremely significant, and its falling away as a result of persecution would be a great temptation for all Churches.

According to Eusebius, Procopius appeared before the court and heard the command to bring a pagan sacrifice. Being a reader, a catechist, a translator from Syriac and an exorcist, that is, a church minister who cast out evil spirits, the saint undoubtedly could arouse the special hatred of the pagans.

In response to the order to make a sacrifice to the gods, Procopius, not without irony, replied that he knows only One One and Only God, Who Himself determines what kind of sacrifice He should make at a given specific moment in time. Such an answer, without a doubt, contained a mockery of the representatives of the Empire, who imagined themselves to have the right to decide what kind of sacrifice those whom they called “gods” wanted to receive. But, most importantly, in his short, convincing answer, Procopius pointed to the confession of the Christian faith and to that genuine sacrifice to the One God, which he himself would soon actually make.

The time of this Palestinian persecution was a period of tetrarchy, that is, the reign of four actual emperors. Therefore, in response to the refusal to make a sacrifice to the gods, the Proconsul ordered Procopius to pour a libation to the “four kings.” In response, the martyr quoted Homer’s Iliad (2.204): “There is no good in multiple powers, let there be one ruler!” The testimony of the holy martyrs of Christ in history followed a certain special plan, which in a remarkable way reproduced the sequence of the ancient Creeds.

Thus, Procopius’ refusal to sacrifice to the Gods was consistent with the Christian monotheistic confession of faith, and, in fact, reproduced the first lines of the Symbol: “I believe in the One God, the Almighty.” The words about the One Sovereign, formally referring to the words of the ancient Greek classic Homer, in fact, meant fidelity to the further words of the Christian confession: “I believe in the One Lord Jesus.” Christians recognized Jesus as Their One Ruler and Master, which extremely irritated the pagans, who considered emperors their lords.

“Having uttered these words, he was beheaded,” is how Eusebius ends his testimony about the martyrdom of Saint Procopius. In the narrative of the feat of the Palestinian martyrs, as we find it in Eusebius, as well as in one of the additional ancient sources, one detail is extremely important. After all, Eusebius calls Procopius “the first martyr,” emphasizing the primacy of this great witness of Christ among the contemporary martyrs among Palestinian Christians. “In Palestine, the first martyr was Procopius,” Eusebius begins his work. For Eusebius, as a historian, sequence and chronology are important. For us, interpreters of the words of ancient authors and the deeds of saints, a theological understanding of each of the few precious words that have reached us is necessary.

According to the Apocalypse, the first martyr was… the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. “Thus says Amen, the faithful and true martyr, the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. 3:14). In this sense, calling the first martyrs, that is, the first witnesses of the faith who suffered for Christ, Stephen and Thecla, and, very importantly, others, the Ancient Church continued this original biblical analogy. And just as in the first apostolic generation the Lord raised up witnesses of faith similar to Himself, so in every era and in every generation, diocese, region, local church that testified to the faith, there were always those who were the first to suffer for Christ.

The first martyrs are a separate, special, chosen type of holiness. Saint Procopius became such a Palestinian first martyr during the Great Persecution of Diocletian. Originally from Aelia Capitolina, he laid the foundation for the great suffering of Christ’s witnesses: Alphaeus, Zacchaeus, Timothy, Agapius, Thecla, Aphian, Ulphianus, Aedesius, Pamphilus, and many, many others, whose memory is celebrated by the Church together with Procopius and on other days. The memory of the martyrs is thanksgiving to God for their testimony, by the power of whose grace in those days, soon, just twenty years later, under the Emperor Constantine, the Holy City of Jerusalem regained its name.