Martyrdom
By tradition, Thyrsus was a catechumen who refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods. He endured extreme tortures, which the accounts describe as including the dislocation of his limbs, the removal of his eyes, and the destruction of his teeth. The synaxarion further relates that during his ordeal he caused a statue of Apollo to collapse through his prayer, which enraged the prefect and led to intensified torments. He is said to have died after making the Sign of the Cross. One tradition holds that he was sentenced to be sawn in half, but the saw became so heavy that the executioners could not use it; for this reason a bucksaw became his iconographic attribute.
Leucius confronted the governor — named Cumbricius in the December 14 account — over his treatment of Christians. He was tortured, hung up and harrowed on his sides, and then beheaded.
The converted pagan priest, called Callinicus in the December 14 account, witnessed the courage of Thyrsus and the collapse of the idol, professed his Christian faith publicly, and was beheaded.
Sources and Names
The group is commemorated on both August 17 and December 14, and the Orthodox tradition treats these as feasts of the same martyrs. The August 17 entry in the OCA Synaxarion is brief, naming Thyrsus, Leucius, Coronatus, and their companions and locating their suffering in Bithynian Caesarea and Apollonia; the December 14 account supplies the fuller narrative of Leucius, Thyrsus, and Callinicus.
The names Coronatus (August 17) and Callinicus (December 14) appear to belong to different manuscript traditions for what may be the same individual — the converted pagan priest. The OCA additionally suggests that Coronatus may be identical with Cornutus, commemorated on September 12.
There is no dedicated combined account of the whole group in wider reference works; the principal external coverage is the article on Saint Thyrsus, which treats him as the central figure of the group.
Relics & Shrines
The relics of Thyrsus were brought to Constantinople. From there his veneration spread to the West, and some relics were later transferred to France.
Thyrsus became the titular saint of the cathedral of Sisteron in the Basses-Alpes (Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Thyrse), and a 12th-century church dedicated to him was established at Châteauponsac. He held a full liturgical office in the Mozarabic liturgy of the Iberian Peninsula.
