NINE MARTYRS AT CYZICUS

The names of the holy nine martyrs are: Theognes, Rufus, Antipater, Theostichus, Artemas, Magnus, Theodotus, Thamasius and Philemon. Their memory in our Church is celebrated on May 12 (April 29). The saints came from different classes, differed in age and origin. Together they suffered for their faith in Christ during the Great Persecution of Diocletian (303–313). Like the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, the Seven Youths of Ephesus, and the Seven Martyrs of Crete, the Holy Nine Martyrs are a collectively revered community of saints.

The ancient city of Cyzicus on the southern shore of the Sea of ​​Marmara, not far from the modern large Turkish port of Bandirma, was an important historical center of antiquity. Christianity here was of apostolic origin. In the year 250, the martyr Myron, who had previously been highly revered among the church people, suffered for Christ in the city. However, it gradually became obvious that the traces of the original sermon were fading away.

“Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” Christ commanded in the Gospel (Matt. 28:19). To those contemporaries of the Cyzicus Martyrs who knew the Scriptures, it seemed that the words of the Lord in the Gospel were now being fulfilled exactly the opposite. The gospel of Christ came to the city of Cyzicus from all nations. The predestination of God in their mission simultaneously sounded the sermon of many. The names of the nine preachers who were granted by the power of grace to soon become the Community of the Martyrs of Cyzicus are of Greco-Roman origin. This means that they accepted faith in Christ through conscious conversion and, like Orthodox Christians in the exclamation “Christ is Risen!” were eager to pass it on to others through evangelization.

When the fruits of such preaching became too visible, the saints, as often happened, were denounced and accused of destroying traditional values. By such, the Roman Empire meant the deification of the Emperor and the service of idols. For refusing to renounce Christ, the saints, as Roman citizens, like the Apostle Paul, who once also preached in these places (cf. Acts 20:5), were beheaded with the sword.

By the providence of God, the veneration of saints seemed to freeze for a moment in the Church, as a Society of Believers, so that with the cessation of persecution under Constantine the Great (+337), it would grow like a gospel mustard seed (Matt. 31:31-32). The relics of the saints were found by believers and placed in the church. Gradually it became obvious that the intercession of the saints had special grace. Their intercession was especially effective in healing from illnesses and getting rid of epidemics and evil spirits.

The city of Cyzicus became an ecclesiastical metropolis, under which were several bishops. Among the other bishops of the city, one of the most famous was the theologian and polemicist Eunomius (334–395). He denied the likeness of the Son of God to the Heavenly Father, polemicized with Saint Basil of Caesarea, and at the Second Ecumenical Council of 381 in Constantinople his teaching was condemned. However, the best antidote to delusion is delusion itself. Therefore, the thought of Eunomius greatly contributed to the birth of the Orthodox theology of the Holy Trinity of the Great Cappadocians.

After the expulsion of the Orthodox population from Asia Minor because of World War I and the forced resettlement of peoples in 1922, committed by the conspiracy of the powers that be in the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the Christian presence in Cyzicus was terminated. Thus, like St Nicholas, St Augustine or Basil the Great and many others, the Holy Cyzicus Martyrs became one of the “homeless saints” - the righteous glorified by the Ancient Church, whom there was no one else to honor in their native lands.

The Almighty Lord, on the eve of these upheavals, Himself preserved the memory of His saints from oblivion. Thus, Adrian of Kazan (1690–1700), who soon became the last pre-synodal Moscow Patriarch, was delivered from paralysis through the prayers of the Nine Martyrs. As a sign of thanksgiving, in 1691 Adrian founded a monastery dedicated to the saints in Kazan, and in 1698 he erected a temple in Moscow. Thus, in such a biblical gratitude of the heart, the veneration of the holy Martyrs of Cyzicus continued in the northern Orthodox countries.