The Holy Maccabee Martyrs

Saint Salome, Saint Eleazar and the Seven Maccabee Martyrs

A radical Catholic friend of mine, a certain Ms H—, recently asked me to translate a prayer for the upcoming Dormition Fast, the Tsaritse moya preblagaya, from Church Slavonic into English. The prayer in the original Slavonic goes as follows:

Царице моя преблагая, надеждо моя Богородице, приятелище сирых и странных предстaтельнице, скорбящих рaдосте, обидимых покровительнице! Зриши мою беду, зриши мою скорбь, помози ми яко немощну, окорми мя яко стрaнна. Обиду мою веси, разреши ту, яко волиши: яко не имам иныя помощи разве Тебе, ни иныя предстaтельницы, ни благия утешительницы, токмо Тебе, о Богомaти, яко да сохраниши мя и покрыеши во веки веков. Аминь.

Now, I’m no CS scholar, so my clumsy translation, kludged together and reverse-engineered from my beginner-level knowledge of Russian and Slovak, got most of the meaning across but hardly did the prayer justice. Thankfully, I went back and found another, more suitable one here:

My most gracious Queen, my hope, Mother of God, shelter of orphans, and intercessor of travellers, strangers and pilgrims, joy of those in sorrow, protectress of the wronged, see my distress, see my affliction! Help me, for I am helpless. Feed me, for I am a stranger and pilgrim. Thou knowest my offence; forgive and resolve it as thou wilt. For I know no other help but thee, no other intercessor, no gracious consoler but thee, O Mother of God, to guard and protect me throughout the ages. Amen.

This prayer, which puts seemingly equal emphasis on the Virgin Mary’s glory and also on her identification with and love for the hopeless and helpless, somehow clicked with me as I remembered that the eve of the Dormition Fast (when we celebrate her falling asleep) coincides with the feast of Saint Salome, her seven sons and their teacher Saint Eleazar. The hagiography of these Holy Maccabee Martyrs is related thus on the OCA website:

The seven holy Maccabee martyrs Abim, Antonius, Gurias, Eleazar, Eusebonus, Alimus and Marcellus, their mother Solomonia and their teacher Eleazar suffered in the year 166 before Christ under the impious Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes. This foolish ruler loved pagan and Hellenistic customs, and held Jewish customs in contempt. He did everything possible to turn people from the Law of Moses and from their covenant with God. He desecrated the Temple of the Lord, placed a statue of the pagan god Zeus there, and forced the Jews to worship it. Many people abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but there were also those who continued to believe that the Savior would come.

A 90-year-old elder, the scribe and teacher Eleazar, was brought to trial for his faithfulness to the Mosaic Law. He suffered tortures and died at Jerusalem.

The disciples of Saint Eleazar, the seven Maccabee brothers and their mother Solomonia, also displayed great courage. They were brought to trial in Antioch by King Antiochus Epiphanes. They fearlessly acknowledged themselves as followers of the True God, and refused to eat pig’s flesh, which was forbidden by the Law.

The eldest brother acted as spokesmen for the rest, saying that they preferred to die rather than break the Law. He was subjected to fierce tortures in sight of his brothers and their mother. His tongue was cut out, he was scalped, and his hands and feet were cut off. Then a cauldron and a large frying pan were heated, and the first brother was thrown into the frying pan, and he died.

The next five brothers were tortured one after the other. The seventh and youngest brother was the last one left alive. Antiochus suggested to Saint Solomonia to persuade the boy to obey him, so that her last son at least would be spared. Instead, the brave mother told him to imitate the courage of his brothers.

The child upbraided the king and was tortured even more cruelly than his brothers had been. After all her seven children had died, Saint Solomonia, stood over their bodies, raised up her hands in prayer to God and died.

The martyric death of the Maccabee brothers inspired Judas Maccabeus, and he led a revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. With God’s help, he gained the victory, and then purified the Temple at Jerusalem. He also threw down the altars which the pagans had set up in the streets. All these events are related in the Second Book of Maccabees.

The OCA hagiography goes on to note that the story of the Maccabee martyrs was a particularly popular subject for both Western Church Fathers like Saint Ambrose of Milan, and Eastern Church Fathers like Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory the Theologian. It is noteworthy to read Saint John’s panegyric on the Maccabee martyrs, how he frames it in order to subvert the traditional Greek-pagan notions of aretē: likening these seven children, an old man and an old woman to athletes in gymnastic and gladiatorial competition, he deliberately contrasts them with the image of gifted youths with splendid shining bodies, blessed by nature with physical prowess. In words he portrays Saint Solomonia, wearied on her walking-stick, spent from seven childbirths, rising in spirit to the supreme feat of witnessing the sufferings of her sons before going to her own death without complaint. Saint John dares the laughter and contempt of the Greek pagans in this comparison; he defies them to produce a feat of gymnastic or gladiatorial valour worthy of matching that faced by this pitiable collection of elderly, of women and children. Virtue, Saint John declares, is not a matter of moral luck, belonging only to men of health and wealth:

Whereas in the games in the outside world, they scrutinise both age and gender and status, and entry to them is closed off to slaves and women and old men and adolescents, here the theatre is opened up with complete safety to every status, every age, each gender, so that you might learn in full the generosity and ineffable power of the One who set up the contest, and see that apostolic remark certified in practice: “His power is perfected in weakness” (II Cor 12:9).

The pathos that Saint John Chrysostom gives to Saint Salome – and this is no accident, with Saint John being as erudite as he is – is the exact same pathos that the Mother of God bore when witnessing the Crucifixion of her own Son. Saint Salome suffered seven deaths – those of each of her children in turn – before she suffered her own. He diminishes neither the natural love a mother feels for her children, nor the steadfastness with which she urges them to stand up to the wicked Antiochus. The suffering of Saint Salome is a ‘type’, a prefiguration, of the suffering of the Theotokos, beholding her son’s death. Within the context of the church calendar, then, we begin the Dormition Fast of the Theotokos with the awareness of the suffering she herself felt at Golgotha.

The praises Saint John employs, particularly in their ironic comparison to the gladiatorial spectacles he condemns elsewhere, additionally bear witness to the greater historical irony of the story of the Maccabee martyrs. It wasn’t just any old tyrant which Saints Eleazar and Salome and her seven children faced: Antiochus was one of the heirs of Alexander the Great, and thus also Aristotle – the pinnacle of a single, unified Hellenistic world-civilisation, the bearer of universal values. The martyrdom of these politically-Persophile Judæo-Syrians, the Maccabees, is the first glimmer we witness of the world-historical process which Saint Il’ya Bunakov understands as the ‘awakening of the East’, a spiritual revolt that is in fact deepened and completed in Jesus Christ, the Messiah of the world. Additional layers of historical irony lie in the fact that these anti-imperialist saints had their cult appropriated by a Christianised Roman Empire. Saint Salome, Saint Eleazar, and the Seven Maccabee Martyrs – pray to God for us sinners!

Let us praise the seven Maccabees,
With their mother Salome and their teacher Eleazar;
They were splendid in lawful contest
As guardians of the teachings of the Law.
Now as Christ’s holy martyrs
They ceaselessly intercede for the world.