The Maccabean Martyrs

The Holy Maccabean Martyrs are the seven brothers and their mother, Solomonia, together with their aged teacher Eleazar, martyrs of the Old Covenant, who suffered in 166 or 167 before Christ in the persecution begun by King Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Their story is found in the second book of Maccabees (chapters 6-7) and, in an expanded form, in the fourth book, which is not in the canon of the Bible. The Church commemorates them on 1 August.

Antiochus Epiphanes, in his policy of Hellenisation, brought pagan Greek customs to Jerusalem and all Judea, defiled the temple by placing in it the statue of Olympian Zeus, and forced the Jews to worship it. The scribe Eleazar, an old man of ninety, refused to eat pork and went firmly to his torments; he died at Jerusalem. The same steadfastness was shown by his disciples, the seven brothers and their mother. In the Orthodox tradition the brothers are named Abim, Antonin, Gurias, Eleazar, Eusebon, Alim and Marcellus, and the mother Solomonia. They were brought before Antiochus, at Antioch according to Christian tradition, and were forced to eat pork as proof of loyalty to the king. All refused, confessing themselves disciples of the true God.

The eldest brother, who answered first in the name of all, was put to terrible torments before the eyes of the others and of their mother: his tongue was cut out, the skin of his head removed, the ends of his hands and feet cut off, and he was thrown into the heated pan. The five who followed endured the same torments one after another, each speaking a word of faith as he died. The seventh, the youngest, remained. The king asked Solomonia to urge him to renounce, so that at least her last son would be left, but the mother strengthened him too in confessing the true God. The young man rejected the king's flatteries and endured the torments like his brothers. The Bible says that the mother died after her sons, without telling how; according to the fourth book of Maccabees she entered the fire; in church tradition she fell asleep after a prayer of thanksgiving over their bodies.

The Antiochene tradition says that their relics were placed on the site of a synagogue, later turned into a church, in the Kerateion quarter of Antioch. Today they are kept at Cologne, in the basilica of Saint Andrew, and in the crypt of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome; the relics of Solomonia are at the Cathedral of Saint George in Istanbul. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus gave a homily on their memory. They are not directly tied to the history of Judas Maccabeus, whose revolt began soon afterward: the name Maccabees comes from Judas's nickname (the hammer), but Christians gave it to the seven brothers as well. Their example was held in the Church as a prefiguring of Christian martyrdom. They are commemorated on 1 August in the old calendar, that is 14 August in the new.