SEVEN MACCABEAN BROTHERS, saints. — From the title of the book (2 Maccabees), which recounts their martyrdom, seven brothers are so called; they, together with their mother, faced death during the persecution of Antiochus IV (175–164 BC) rather than eat forbidden meats.
The king’s direct involvement, together with the ancient memory of their cult in Antioch, would suggest that they were martyred in the capital of the kingdom; yet from the general historical context it seems more logical to think of Jerusalem, the principal center of the persecution. The king’s presence suggests the period described in 2 Macc. 5:11 ff. The chapter (2 Macc. 7:1–41) that recounts their cruel death, besides being an enthusiastic tribute to the constancy of the youths, is exceedingly rich in theological teaching, such as on creation from nothing (7:28), on the resurrection (7:9, 14), on the happiness or reward due to martyrdom (7:36), and on the punishments awaiting the wicked (7:17, 35).
The continuing memory of these youths and their mother in the liturgy is documented in the apocryphal 4 Maccabees (1st c. BC), which treats their violent death within a philosophical framework (4 Macc. 8:1–18, 24), and by certain references in later works. Their memory was even more vivid in Christianity. Not only were they often cited as examples during anti-Christian persecutions, but they were soon equated with Christian martyrs and honored with true cult.
Liturgical feast. Their cult is already attested in a very clear manner in the 4th c. (cf. Ambrose, Ep., 40, 16; PL 16, 1154; John Chrysostom, In sanctos Machabaeos, hom., 2; PG 50, 617–26; Theophilus of Alexandria, Ep., 100, 9 in the epistolary of St. Jerome; CSEL, 55, 221; St. Augustine, Sermones, 300–301; PL 38, 1376–85; id., Serm., 17; PL 46, 874–81, ed. G. Morin in Miscellanea agostiniana, I, Rome 1930, pp. 81–89). Their feast on August 10 is recent in the Martyrology of St. Augustine (where the Jewish quarter of Antioch is indicated), in the Calendar of Carthage, in the Martyrology of Jerusalem, in the historical martyrologies and in the Roman, in the Jerusalem Sacramentary (ed. A. H. Wilson, Oxford 1894, p. 188), in the Visigothic oration of the late 7th or early 8th c. (ed. J. Vives, Barcelona 1946, pp. 368–69), and in the Gelasian Sacramentaries of the 8th c. (cf. P. De Puniet, Le Sacramentaire Romain de Gellone [offprint from Eph. Lit.], Rome [1938], pp. 124–25*). From these the feast of the Maccabees passed into the Roman Missal and Breviary. The Leonine and Gregorian Sacramentaries do not mention this feast. Antioch was the center from which the cult of the Maccabees spread; Rome received relics that were deposited in the basilica of St. Peter in Chains; indeed, in 1876, during work to arrange the chains of St. Peter, a paleo-Christian sarcophagus was uncovered beneath the high altar, divided internally into seven compartments with two lead plates bearing the inscription: “in his septem loculis recondita sunt ossa et cineres sanctorum septem Machabeorum” etc. (cf. G. B. De Rossi, cited in bibliography).