A martyr of Amastris in Paphlagonia who cut down a venerated pagan tree and died in prison.
The Holy Martyr Hyacinth of Amastris
Hyacinth was a martyr of Amastris, a coastal city of Paphlagonia on the Black Sea in Asia Minor, commemorated on July 18. According to the synaxarion he was born to pious Christian parents, named in the Greek tradition as Theokletos and Theonilla, during the episcopate of Bishop Herakleides of Amastris. The tradition relates that an angel appeared and gave the child his name.
The accounts preserve a story from his early childhood: at the age of three he is said to have prayed for a dead infant, who was restored to life, after which the two children grew up together leading an ascetic manner of life. As a young man he was moved by zeal against pagan worship. Noticing that the pagans of the city venerated a tree — described in the Greek synaxarion as a hollow elm — he cut it down, an act that led directly to his arrest.
By tradition he was seized by the governor, named in the sources as Castritus (Canstrisius), together with other notables of the city, and subjected to severe tortures: he was beaten, all his teeth were knocked out, and he was bound with ropes and dragged along the ground outside the city. He was then cast into prison, where, after much suffering, he died and gave up his soul to God. The sources do not record a precise year, though his era is placed among the early, pre-Nicene persecutions.
The defining episode of Hyacinth's life in the synaxarion is his destruction of a tree that the pagans of Amastris venerated. The Greek tradition specifies a hollow elm full of holes, which was an object of idolatrous worship. Moved by religious zeal, Hyacinth cut it down, and this act of open opposition to the city's cult is presented as the immediate cause of his arrest and martyrdom.
The Greek synaxarion records a tradition associated with his tomb: at his memorial, earth is said to issue from the grave during the celebrations, which the bishops distributed to those seeking healing of body and soul. He is to be distinguished from the better-known Martyr Hyacinth of Caesarea, who is commemorated on July 3.
Distinct from Hyacinth of Caesarea (Jul 3).