Sagar

Sagar of Laodicea, known in Greek as Sagaris (Σάγαρις), was a Christian bishop of Laodicea in Phrygia, in the Roman province of Asia in western Asia Minor (the site of ancient Laodicea on the Lycus, near modern Denizli in Turkey). He is remembered in the churches as a bishop and martyr of the second century. No reliable source records his parentage, place of birth, or year of birth, and nothing can be established about his education or the circumstances in which he entered the clergy. The earliest and most important testimony to his life and office is a letter written about 190–196 by Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, to Pope Victor I of Rome during the Quartodeciman controversy over the date of Easter. Eusebius of Caesarea preserved a long excerpt of that letter in Book V of his Church History. Polycrates, defending the Asian custom of observing Easter on the fourteenth day of Nisan, listed distinguished local Christians who had kept that practice. Among them he named Sagaris, a bishop and martyr who had fallen asleep in Laodicea. The wording shows that by the time Polycrates wrote, Sagar was already dead as a martyr at Laodicea and was regarded as a figure of sufficient standing to be cited with the apostle Philip, John, Polycarp of Smyrna, and other leading lights of the churches of Asia.

Later martyrological tradition went beyond this brief notice. Some recensions of the Roman Martyrology and various modern saint directories described Sagar as one of the first disciples of the apostle Paul and placed his death in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180), sometimes assigning a year such as 166 or 175. The claim that he was a personal disciple of Paul is hard to reconcile with a mid-second-century martyrdom and is best read as a later hagiographical development, perhaps meant to link the bishop of a church already addressed in the New Testament with the apostolic age. Eusebius and Polycrates give no imperial date for the martyrdom. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that Sagar died a martyr at Laodicea before the last decade of the second century, in a period when local persecutions of Christians occurred in Asia Minor. No authentic acts of his passion survive, and no contemporary narrative of the trial or manner of his death is known.

Laodicea on the Lycus was a wealthy Phrygian city, one of the seven churches of Asia named in the Book of Revelation, and an important Christian centre from the first century. A bishopric is attested there from an early date, and Sagar is among the earliest named occupants of the see. His memory was kept in the liturgical calendars of East and West. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 6 October with the notice of Saint Sagar, bishop and martyr, at Laodicea in Phrygia; older forms of the martyrology added the statement that he was among the first disciples of Paul. He is also remembered in some Eastern commemorations under the name Sagaris. He does not appear to have acquired a developed legendary passion, a cycle of miracles, or a well-documented shrine, and no reliable information survives about his burial. His cult belongs to the ancient, pre-congregation veneration of martyrs whose names entered the martyrologies through local and regional tradition rather than through a later papal canonization.

Because the evidence is so thin, Sagar remains obscure even among second-century Asian bishops. He is historically significant mainly as a named bishop-martyr of Laodicea and as a witness, through Polycrates, to Quartodeciman practice in the churches of Asia. No writings by him are extant. He is not known to have been invoked as patron of any particular place, profession, illness, or group. His feast on 6 October continues to mark his place in the Roman Martyrology.