The Saints

“Father of Monasticism”

St. Anthony the Great

Father of Monks · The Great

The Egyptian who gave away his inheritance at a word of the Gospel and went into the desert, becoming the father of Christian monasticism and the great pattern of ascetic struggle.

“Teacher of Silence”

St. Arsenius the Great

Of Scetis · The Roman

The Roman deacon and imperial tutor who left the palace of Theodosius for the Egyptian desert, and became the great teacher of silence: flee, be silent, pray always.

“Pillar of Orthodoxy”

St. Athanasius the Great

Patriarch of Alexandria · Pillar of Orthodoxy

The fearless defender of the Council of Nicaea against the Arian heresy, exiled five times for his confession that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

“Golden-Mouth”

St. John Chrysostom

Archbishop of Constantinople · Golden-Mouth

The greatest preacher of the Church, who spoke without notes for hours and whom the people called Chrysostom, 'Golden-Mouth', for the sweetness and force of his words.

“Father of Monasticism”

St. Basil the Great

Archbishop of Caesarea · Father of Monasticism

The Cappadocian father who gave the Eastern Church its monastic rule, its eucharistic liturgy, and the decisive defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

“The Theologian”

St. Gregory the Theologian

Archbishop of Constantinople · The Theologian

One of only three saints surnamed 'the Theologian' in the Orthodox Church, for the depth and exactness of his speech concerning the Holy Trinity.

“Defender of the Holy Icons”

St. John of Damascus

Hymnographer · Defender of the Holy Icons

The last great Father of the East, who under Muslim rule defended the veneration of holy icons against the iconoclast emperors and gave the Church its definitive systematic theology.

“Acquirer of the Holy Spirit”

St. Seraphim of Sarov

Wonderworker · Acquirer of the Holy Spirit

The Russian wonderworker who lived a thousand nights on a stone in the Sarov forest and taught that the whole aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

“Theophorus, Disciple of John”

St. Ignatius of Antioch

Bishop of Antioch · Disciple of the Theologian · Apostolic Father

A disciple of the Apostle John and second bishop of Antioch, who was taken in chains to Rome to be killed by wild beasts in the Colosseum, and wrote seven letters along the road that have shaped the Church ever since.

“The Confessor”

St. Maximus the Confessor

Monk · Theologian of the Two Wills of Christ

The monk who almost alone defended the Orthodox confession that Christ has two natural wills, divine and human, against the imperial monothelite party, and was tortured and exiled for it; called 'the Confessor' for the witness of his maimed body.

“The New Theologian”

St. Symeon the New Theologian

Abbot of St. Mamas · Father of Hesychasm

One of only three saints surnamed 'the Theologian' in the Orthodox Church, who insisted, against the academic theology of his day, that the same gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the apostles are available to every Christian who seeks them.

“Doctor of Grace”

St. Augustine of Hippo

Bishop of Hippo · Blessed Augustine

The North African bishop whose long Tractates on the Gospel of John gave the Latin Church its deepest reading of the Fourth Gospel.

“Seal of the Fathers”

St. Cyril of Alexandria

Patriarch of Alexandria · Seal of the Fathers

The patriarch whose Christology defeated Nestorianism at the Council of Ephesus and whose commentary on John defends the eternal divinity of the Word.

“Disciple of the Disciple”

St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Bishop of Lugdunum · Disciple of Polycarp

The second-century bishop who heard Polycarp who heard John, and whose Against Heresies preserved the apostolic faith against the Gnostic teachers of his age.

“The Apostle to the Nations”

Holy Apostle Paul

Apostle to the Nations · Chosen Vessel

The Pharisee from Tarsus who hunted the Church until the risen Christ stopped him on the road to Damascus, and who from that day to his beheading at Rome traveled the empire planting the Gospel.

“The Desert Penitent”

St. Mary of Egypt

Ascetic of the Jordan · Mother of all penitents

The Alexandrian who lived in dissolution for seventeen years, was halted at the doors of the Holy Sepulchre by an unseen hand, and spent forty-seven years alone in the desert weeping for her sins until the Theotokos sent the priest Zosimas to find her.

“The Wonderworker”

St. Nicholas the Wonderworker

Archbishop of Myra in Lycia · The Wonderworker

The fourth-century bishop of Myra whose secret almsgiving, deliverances at sea, and reckless love for the poor have made him the most universally honored saint of the Christian world.

“Margaret of Antioch”

St. Marina the Great-Martyr

Great-Martyr of Antioch in Pisidia · Margaret

The young virgin of Pisidia who confessed Christ before her own pagan father, endured fierce tortures, and is venerated in the West under the name Margaret.

“Daughter of the Apostle Philip”

St. Hermione of Ephesus

Virgin-Martyr · Daughter of the Apostle Philip

One of the four prophesying daughters of the Apostle Philip, a healer of the sick at Ephesus who confessed Christ before two emperors and died a martyr.

“The Fool-for-Christ”

St. Isidora of Tabenna

Fool-for-Christ · Nun of the Tabennisi Convent

The nun of the Tabennisi convent who hid her holiness beneath the guise of madness, served as the lowest of all, and is honored as the first fool-for-Christ.

“Deaconess of Constantinople”

St. Olympias the Deaconess

Deaconess of the Great Church · Friend of St. John Chrysostom

The noble widow of Constantinople who gave her vast fortune to the poor and the Church, served as deaconess of the Great Church, and stood by St. John Chrysostom in his exile.

“The Cappadocian”

St. Gregory of Nyssa

Bishop of Nyssa · The Cappadocian Father

The youngest of the great Cappadocians, brother of St. Basil and St. Macrina, a profound mystical theologian whose works on the soul and the vision of God shaped all later Orthodox thought.

“Elder of the Holy Mountain”

St. Paisios the Athonite

Hieromonk of Mount Athos · Elder of Panagouda

The Cappadocian-born monk of Mount Athos whose hermitage at Panagouda was for twenty-five years a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands seeking counsel, and who, since his glorification in 2015, has been venerated as one of the great elders of the modern Orthodox world.

“The Forerunner”

Holy Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John

The Forerunner · Greatest born of women

The son of the priest Zacharias and of Elisabeth, conceived by promise in their old age, who went into the deserts until the day of his showing unto Israel, preached the baptism of repentance at the Jordan, baptized the Lord and saw the Spirit descending as a dove, and was beheaded by Herod for the truth's sake. The Lord Himself said of him that among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater.

“Chief of the Apostles”

Holy Apostle Peter

Chief of the Apostles · The Rock

The Galilean fisherman whom Christ called from his nets to be a fisher of men, whose confession at Caesarea Philippi the Church names the rock of her faith, and who, after a night of denial and a morning of restoration, fed the sheep of the Lord until he was crucified head-downward in Rome.

“The Evangelist”

Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew

Evangelist · Levi the Publican

The customs officer of Capernaum who left his ledger at a word of the Lord and afterwards wrote the first of the four Gospels, the Gospel of the Kingdom for the Hebrews.

“The Theologian”

Holy Apostle and Evangelist John

The Theologian · The Beloved Disciple

The fisherman of Galilee whom the Lord loved, who reclined on his breast at the Mystical Supper and stood beneath his Cross, and who afterwards wrote the Fourth Gospel, the three catholic epistles, and the Apocalypse, the only apostle to die in peace, having lived to a very great age at Ephesus.

“Didymus, the Twin”

Holy Apostle Thomas

Apostle to India · The Twin

The apostle whose honest doubt at the Resurrection drew from the Risen Lord the offer of his wounds, and whose confession 'My Lord and my God' is the highest the Gospels record from any human mouth; tradition sends him to India, where he founded the Church of the Malabar coast.

“Equal-to-the-Apostles”

St. Mary Magdalene

Myrrhbearer · Equal-to-the-Apostles · Apostle to the Apostles

The woman of Magdala from whom the Lord cast out seven demons and who afterwards followed him to the Cross, kept vigil at his tomb, and was the first to see and to announce the Resurrection.

“The First-Called”

Holy Apostle Andrew

Protokletos · The First-Called · Brother of Peter

The brother of Simon Peter, first of the disciples of John the Baptist to follow the Lord, and the apostle whose preaching opened the Gospel to the lands of the Black Sea and to the city that would become Constantinople.

“Son of Thunder”

Holy Apostle James, Son of Zebedee

Brother of John the Theologian · First of the Twelve to Suffer

The elder brother of John the Theologian and the first of the Twelve to die for the Name, beheaded at Jerusalem under King Herod Agrippa I around the year 44.

“Of Bethsaida”

Holy Apostle Philip

Apostle of Hierapolis · One of the Twelve

The Galilean of Bethsaida who brought Nathanael to the Lord with the words 'Come and see,' asked at the Mystical Supper to be shown the Father, and preached the Gospel through Phrygia until he was crucified at Hierapolis.

“Nathanael, the Israelite Indeed”

Holy Apostle Bartholomew

Nathanael of Cana · Apostle of Armenia and India

The Israelite in whom the Lord said there was no guile, called Nathanael in the Gospel of John and Bartholomew in the synoptics, whose long missions reached India and Armenia and who was flayed and beheaded for the Faith.

“Son of Alphaeus”

Holy Apostle James, Son of Alphaeus

One of the Twelve · The Silent Apostle

The second James named among the Twelve, distinguished in the apostolic lists from James the son of Zebedee and from James the Brother of God, who labored quietly through the apostolic age and died a martyr in Egypt.

“Thaddaeus, the Brother of James”

Holy Apostle Jude

Thaddaeus · Brother of James · Apostle to Armenia

The apostle whom Matthew and Mark call Thaddaeus and whom Luke calls Jude the brother of James, the writer of the brief catholic epistle that bears his name, careful through it all not to be confused with Judas Iscariot.

“The Zealot”

Holy Apostle Simon the Zealot

The Canaanite · One of the Twelve

The second Simon among the Twelve, distinguished by the byname Zealot from Simon Peter, an apostle whose missionary travels in the early tradition span Egypt, Britain, Persia, and the Caucasus, and who was martyred by being sawn asunder.

“Numbered with the Eleven”

Holy Apostle Matthias

Successor to Judas Iscariot · One of the Seventy

The disciple who had companied with the Twelve through the whole of the Lord's ministry and was chosen by lot in the upper room before Pentecost to fill the place vacated by Judas Iscariot, taking the apostolate the traitor had cast away.

“Successor of St. Mark”

St. Anianus of Alexandria

Second Bishop of Alexandria · Cobbler of the See of St. Mark

The Alexandrian cobbler whose pierced hand the Apostle Mark healed at his first preaching in the city, who was baptized with his household, and who after Mark's martyrdom became the second bishop of the see he founded.

“Disciple of John”

St. Polycarp of Smyrna

Bishop of Smyrna · Hieromartyr · Disciple of the Theologian

The bishop of Smyrna who as a young man sat at the feet of the Apostle John, who pastored his church for upwards of sixty years, and who at the age of eighty-six was burned and finally stabbed for the Faith in the stadium of his city.

“Hearer of the Elders”

St. Papias of Hierapolis

Bishop of Hierapolis · Hearer of John · Companion of Polycarp

The bishop of Hierapolis whom Irenaeus calls 'a hearer of John, and a companion of Polycarp,' the writer of five lost books on the oracles of the Lord, and the earliest extra-biblical witness to the writing of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.

“Scribe of the Theologian”

St. Prochorus, Deacon and Bishop

One of the Seven Deacons · Scribe of John on Patmos · Bishop of Nicomedia

One of the Seven Deacons chosen with Stephen in the sixth chapter of Acts, who afterwards attached himself to the Apostle John, served him as scribe on Patmos at the dictation of the Fourth Gospel, and reposed a martyr as bishop of Nicomedia.

“Captain of the Heavenly Hosts”

The Holy Archangel Michael

Archistratigos of the Bodiless Hosts · Defender of the Faith · First among the Angels

The chief of the angelic orders who in the Scriptures stands for Israel against the prince of Persia, contends with the devil over the body of Moses, casts the dragon out of heaven, and to whom the Church gives the protection of every soul, every parish, and every Christian people.

“Wonderworker of Aegina”

St. Nektarios of Aegina

Metropolitan of Pentapolis · Wonderworker · Modern Saint

A modern saint of the Greek tradition, a Metropolitan slandered out of his see who spent the rest of his life teaching poor seminarians in Athens, founded a convent on Aegina, was buried there in 1920, and within a generation was glorified as one of the most-loved wonderworkers of the Greek-speaking world.

“Martyr of Noricum”

St. Florian of Lorch

Roman Officer · Holy Martyr of Noricum · Patron of those in danger from fire

A Roman officer of the province of Noricum who, in the great persecution under Diocletian, refused to take part in the sacrifices, confessed himself a Christian, was scourged and drowned in the river Enns with a millstone tied around his neck. A pre-Schism Western saint received by the Eastern Orthodox Church alongside the other martyrs of the Undivided Church.

“Equal-to-the-Apostles”

St. Constantine the Great

Equal-to-the-Apostles · First Christian Emperor · Convener of the First Ecumenical Council

The Emperor who saw the sign of the Cross in the sky before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, gave the Church her freedom by the Edict of Milan (313), summoned the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, and re-founded New Rome at Constantinople. Venerated together with his mother St. Helena, equal-to-the-apostles, who found the True Cross.

“The Confessor”

St. Alexander of Alexandria

Patriarch of Alexandria · Father of Nicaea · Bishop of St. Athanasius

Patriarch of Alexandria who deposed the presbyter Arius in 318, gathered the local synod that anathematized his teaching, and led the anti-Arian party at the First Ecumenical Council in 325. The bishop who ordained the young deacon Athanasius and brought him to Nicaea.

“Confessor of the West”

St. Hosius of Cordova

Bishop of Cordova · Confessor · Elder of the West at Nicaea

Bishop of Cordova in Spain for sixty years, the Western Father who survived the persecution of Diocletian to become St. Constantine's theological adviser and the elder whose name signs first at the First Ecumenical Council. In his last years he was tortured into a brief subscription to an Arian formula, recanted it on his deathbed, and died confessing the Nicene Faith.

“The Confessor”

St. Eustathius of Antioch

Patriarch of Antioch · Confessor · Opener of the First Council

Patriarch of Antioch and a Confessor under Licinius before the peace of the Church. He gave the opening address to the First Ecumenical Council in the Eastern tradition. Deposed by an Arianizing synod at Antioch around 330 and exiled until his death some thirty years later.

“The Wonderworker”

St. Spyridon of Trimythous

Shepherd of Cyprus · Bishop of Trimythous · Wonderworker · Father of Nicaea

The shepherd-bishop of Trimythous in Cyprus, married, unlettered in the secular learning of his day, who carried his flock through the great persecution and stood at the First Ecumenical Council in 325, where the tradition gives him the famous demonstration of the Holy Trinity with the brick. His relics on the island of Corfu remain incorrupt to this day.

“The Great”

St. Theodosius the Great

Emperor of the Romans · Convener of the Second Ecumenical Council · Defender of Nicaea

The first emperor since Constantine to confess the Nicene Faith without reservation, who took the throne in 379 in the wake of the disaster at Adrianople, made the Nicene Faith the public confession of the empire (380), convened the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople (381), and submitted to public penance under St. Ambrose of Milan after the massacre at Thessaloniki (390).

“Confessor of Antioch”

St. Meletius of Antioch

Patriarch of Antioch · Confessor · Presider of the Second Council

Patriarch of Antioch who was thrice exiled by the Arianizing emperors for confessing the consubstantial Faith. Restored to his see by St. Theodosius the Great in 378, he presided over the opening of the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 and died during its sessions. St. John Chrysostom, who knew him as a young man, preached his funeral oration.

“Catechist of the Holy City”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem

Patriarch of Jerusalem · Catechist · Father of the Second Council

Patriarch of Jerusalem for thirty-five years, three times exiled by the Arianizing emperors for confessing the consubstantial Faith. His twenty-three Catechetical Lectures, preached to the catechumens in the Anastasis at the Holy Sepulchre in the years before his consecration, are the foundational fourth-century introduction to the Christian Mysteries.

“The Senator-Bishop”

St. Nectarius of Constantinople

Archbishop of Constantinople · Father of the Second Council · Successor of St. Gregory the Theologian

The unbaptized senator of Constantinople who, on the withdrawal of St. Gregory the Theologian, was elected to the throne of Constantinople in 381, baptized, ordained, and consecrated in the same day. He presided over the latter half of the Second Ecumenical Council and the final issue of its decrees, and was the predecessor under whom St. John Chrysostom served as a presbyter.

“Hammer of Heresies”

St. Epiphanius of Salamis

Archbishop of Salamis · Confessor · Author of the Panarion

Archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus for thirty-five years, a Palestinian-born ascetic who knew six languages and devoted his life to refuting the heresies of the fourth century. His Ancoratus (c. 374) preserves the baptismal creed scholars hold to be a near-cousin of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed; his Panarion is the great fourth-century encyclopedia of heresies.

“Defender of Hesychasm”

St. Gregory Palamas

Archbishop of Thessaloniki · Theologian of the Uncreated Light · Defender of the Hesychasts

Athonite monk and Archbishop of Thessaloniki who, against the philosophical attacks of Barlaam the Calabrian, defended the hesychast prayer of the heart and gave the Eastern Orthodox Church its mature theological grammar for what man knows of God: that God is unknowable in His essence and truly known in His uncreated energies, the same uncreated divine light the three disciples saw on Tabor.

“The Bulgarian”

St. Theophylact of Ohrid

Archbishop of Ohrid · Explainer of the Gospels

The eleventh-century Byzantine scholar and bishop whose verse-by-verse Explanations of the Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles became, and remain, the most-loved continuous patristic commentary on the New Testament in the Orthodox East.

“Harp of the Spirit”

St. Ephraim the Syrian

Deacon of Edessa · Harp of the Spirit

The fourth-century Syriac father whose verse-homilies and hymns gave the Eastern Church one of its earliest and most enduring voices in praise of the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection.

“The Philosopher”

St. Justin Martyr

Philosopher and Martyr · Apologist of the Second Century

The first great Christian philosopher, a convert who kept the philosopher's cloak and gave his life at Rome, leaving the earliest full defense of the faith and the oldest description we possess of Baptism and the Eucharist.

“of Nineveh”

St. Isaac the Syrian

Bishop of Nineveh · Hermit of the Mountain

The seventh-century hermit-bishop whose homilies on repentance, stillness, and the boundless mercy of God became one of the most beloved guides to the inner life across the whole Orthodox world.

“Mark Eugenikos”

St. Mark of Ephesus

Metropolitan of Ephesus · Pillar of Orthodoxy

The metropolitan who stood alone against the union of Florence, refusing to sign away the Orthodox faith on the Filioque and the other points dividing East and West, and so was honoured by the Church as the Pillar of Orthodoxy.

“The Great”

St. Photius the Great

Patriarch of Constantinople · Pillar of Orthodoxy · Defender of the Procession of the Spirit

The most learned man of his age and twice Patriarch of Constantinople, who answered the Frankish addition of the Filioque to the Creed with the first full Eastern treatise on the procession of the Holy Spirit, presided over the great reconciling council of 879-880, and sent the mission of Cyril and Methodius to the Slavs. The Church honours him as one of the three Pillars of Orthodoxy, with St. Gregory Palamas and St. Mark of Ephesus.

“Equals-to-the-Apostles”

Saints Cyril and Methodius

Equals-to-the-Apostles · Enlighteners of the Slavs · Teachers of the Slavonic Letters

The two brothers from Thessaloniki who carried the Gospel to the Slavs in their own tongue. To do it they devised the first Slavic alphabet and rendered the Scriptures and the services of the Church into Slavonic, becoming the fathers of an entire Christian civilisation and the patrons of all the Slavic peoples.

“Metanoeite (Repent)”

St. Nikon the Metanoeite

Preacher of Repentance · Enlightener of Crete and Sparta

The tenth-century wandering preacher whose single cry, Metanoeite, Repent, called whole regions back to Christ, from the mountains of Pontus to newly delivered Crete and the cities of the Peloponnese.

“The Great”

St. Leo the Great

Pope of Rome · Father of Chalcedon · Author of the Tome

Pope of Rome whose dogmatic letter to Flavian of Constantinople, the Tome, was received by the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451 as the standard of the faith, the bishops crying out that Peter had spoken through Leo. He defended the city of Rome from Attila the Hun and is one of only two Popes the Church has named the Great.

St. Celestine of Rome

Pope of Rome · Father of Ephesus · Judge against Nestorius

Pope of Rome who, hearing of the teaching of Nestorius of Constantinople, gathered a Roman synod that condemned it and entrusted to Cyril of Alexandria the execution of its sentence. His legates carried the judgment of the West to the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431.

St. Memnon of Ephesus

Archbishop of Ephesus · Host and Father of the Third Council

Archbishop of Ephesus who opened his city and his cathedral to the Third Ecumenical Council in 431, and who stood with Cyril of Alexandria against Nestorius. The council met in the great church of the Theotokos in his see, and he bore the brunt of the counter-synod of John of Antioch, which deposed both him and Cyril before the wider council restored them.

St. Juvenal of Jerusalem

Patriarch of Jerusalem · Father of Ephesus and Chalcedon

Bishop of Jerusalem under whom the holy city was raised to the rank of a patriarchate. He stood among the Fathers of the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus and of the Fourth at Chalcedon, where the apostolic dignity of the see of Jerusalem was confirmed. By the tradition of the Church he was present at the falling asleep of the Mother of God recounted to the empress Pulcheria.

St. Anatolius of Constantinople

Patriarch of Constantinople · Father of Chalcedon

Patriarch of Constantinople who succeeded the martyred Flavian and presided, with the imperial commissioners and the Roman legates, over the sessions of the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451. Several of the hymns of the Church are ascribed to his hand.

“The Right-believing Emperor”

St. Marcian the Emperor

Emperor of the Romans · Convener of the Fourth Ecumenical Council

Emperor of the East who, with the empress Pulcheria whom he took to wife, summoned the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451 to undo the violence of the Robber Council and to confess the faith of the two natures of Christ. A soldier raised to the purple late in life, remembered with Pulcheria as a defender of Orthodoxy.

“The Virgin Empress”

St. Pulcheria the Empress

Empress of the Romans · Guardian of the Faith of Chalcedon

Empress of the East, elder sister and guardian of Theodosius the Younger, who took a vow of virginity in her youth and governed with wisdom and piety for half a century. With her consort Marcian she summoned the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon, and she is honoured as a defender of the faith of the Mother of God and of the two natures of Christ.

“The Great”

St. Justinian the Great

Emperor of the Romans · Convener of the Fifth Ecumenical Council · Builder of Hagia Sophia

Emperor of the East who reigned for nearly forty years, codified the Roman law, raised the great church of Hagia Sophia, and summoned the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553 to confirm the faith of Chalcedon against the Three Chapters. The hymn Only-begotten Son, sung at every Liturgy, is ascribed by tradition to his hand.

St. Eutychius of Constantinople

Patriarch of Constantinople · President of the Fifth Council · Confessor

Patriarch of Constantinople who presided over the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553. In his later years he was driven from his see and into twelve years of exile for resisting the Emperor Justinian on a point of doctrine, and was restored to his throne under a later Emperor, dying in peace as a confessor.

St. Agatho of Rome

Pope of Rome · Father of the Sixth Council · Wonderworker

Pope of Rome whose dogmatic letter to the Emperors, confessing two wills and two operations in the one Christ, was received by the Sixth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 681 as the standard of the faith against the Monothelite heresy. A Sicilian of great age and gentleness, remembered as a wonderworker.

St. Sophronius of Jerusalem

Patriarch of Jerusalem · Defender against the Monothelites · Hymnographer

Patriarch of Jerusalem and one of the first and clearest voices against the Monothelite heresy, whose synodical letter prepared the way for the confession of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. A monk and a poet, he wrote the Life of Mary of Egypt and many hymns of the Church, and it fell to him to surrender the holy city to the Arabs in his last years.

“The Confessor”

St. Martin the Confessor

Pope of Rome · Confessor · Martyr of the Two Wills

Pope of Rome who gathered the Lateran Synod of 649 to condemn the Monothelite heresy, and who for that confession was seized by the imperial power, dragged to Constantinople, tried, beaten, and exiled to the Crimea, where he died of his sufferings. The last bishop of Rome the Church honours as a martyr, a forerunner of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

St. Tarasius of Constantinople

Patriarch of Constantinople · President of the Seventh Council

Patriarch of Constantinople, raised from the lay state to the throne of the imperial city, who with the empress Irene summoned and presided over the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787, which restored the holy icons. A statesman of mildness and a generous almsgiver.

“The Right-believing Empress”

St. Irene the Empress

Empress of the Romans · Convener of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

Empress of the East, an Athenian raised to the throne by marriage, who as regent for her young son summoned the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787 and restored the veneration of the holy icons after sixty years of iconoclasm. Honoured by the Church for the defence of the images of Christ and his saints.

St. Adrian of Rome

Pope of Rome · Father of the Seventh Council

Pope of Rome whose legates and whose dogmatic letters upholding the veneration of the holy icons were read and received at the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787. He governed the Roman Church for twenty-three years, the longest pontificate of the early medieval West.

“Translator of the Philokalia”

St. Paisius Velichkovsky

Elder of Neamț · Reviver of Hesychasm

The Ukrainian-born elder who, from the monasteries of Moldavia, revived the inward prayer of the heart and rendered the Philokalia into Slavonic, sending the hesychast tradition out across the whole Orthodox East.

“Editor of the Romanian Philokalia”

St. Dumitru Stăniloae

Priest and Theologian · Confessor

The Transylvanian priest counted among the foremost Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, who translated and annotated the Romanian Philokalia and suffered imprisonment under the communist regime.

“Elder of Sihăstria”

St. Cleopas of Sihăstria

Archimandrite · Spiritual Father of Romania

The shepherd-turned-monk whose plain, fervent counsel and command of the Scriptures and Fathers made him the most sought-after spiritual father of twentieth-century Romanian monasticism.

“The Iconographer”

St. Sofian of Antim

Archimandrite of Antim Monastery · Iconographer and Confessor

The abbot and master iconographer of the Antim Monastery in Bucharest, a gentle confessor who endured years in the communist prisons and adorned the churches of Romania and beyond with his frescoes.

“Spiritual Father of the Romanians”

St. Arsenius of Prislop

Hieromonk of Prislop · Confessor

The Transylvanian hieromonk, iconographer, and preacher whose ministry at the monastery of Prislop drew vast crowds, and who suffered repeated imprisonment and surveillance under the communist regime.

“the Myrrh-streaming”

St. Simeon the Myrrh-streaming

Grand Prince of Serbia · Founder of the Nemanjić Dynasty

The Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja, who gathered the Serbian lands into one realm and founded the Nemanjić dynasty, then laid down his crown to become a monk and died on the Holy Mountain — the father, in the flesh and in the spirit, of St. Sava.

“Enlightener of Serbia”

St. Sava of Serbia

First Archbishop of Serbia · Enlightener of the Serbs

The youngest son of the Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja, who forsook a royal future for the monastic life on Mount Athos and became the first Archbishop of an autocephalous Serbian Church — the father of Serbian letters, law, and Christian nationhood.

“the Great Martyr”

St. Lazar of Serbia

Prince of the Serbs · Holy Great-Martyr of Kosovo

The Prince who gathered the Serbian lands after the fall of the Nemanjić kings and led the Christian host against the Ottomans at Kosovo, choosing — in the words of the tradition — the Kingdom of Heaven over an earthly crown, and dying there as a holy martyr.

“the Wonderworker of Ostrog”

St. Basil of Ostrog

Metropolitan of Zahumlje and the Coastlands · Wonderworker

The seventeenth-century Herzegovinian shepherd who became Metropolitan of Zahumlje and withdrew to the cliffs of Ostrog, where his incorrupt relics rest to this day — one of the most beloved wonderworkers of the Balkans, venerated by Christians and non-Christians alike.

“the Serbian Chrysostom”

St. Nikolaj Velimirović

Bishop of Žiča and Ohrid · the New Chrysostom

The bishop, preacher, and poet often called the Serbian Chrysostom: among the most influential Orthodox writers of the twentieth century, a confessor imprisoned in Dachau, and in his last years a teacher in the Orthodox seminaries of America.

“of Ćelije”

St. Justin Popović

Archimandrite of Ćelije · Confessor and Theologian

The archimandrite and theologian of Ćelije, reckoned among the foremost Orthodox thinkers of the twentieth century: a fearless witness to the faith under communism, a spiritual father to a generation of bishops, and the author of a vast dogmatic and devotional corpus centered on the God-Man, Christ.

“Moses the Black, the Strong”

St. Moses the Ethiopian

Desert Father of Scetis · Once a robber, then a monk and martyr

A tall and powerful Ethiopian who had been a household slave, dismissed for theft, and then the chief of a band of robbers in Egypt, until grace overtook him and he became a monk of Scetis. By long and violent struggle against his passions he was made gentle, a priest and a teacher of the brethren, and at the last a martyr, having refused to lift a hand against the marauders who fell upon his cell.

“The Great Martyr”

St. Niketas the Goth

Greatmartyr among the Goths

A Goth of the lands beyond the Danube who received the faith of Nicaea and labored to spread it among his own people, and who in the persecution raised against the Christian Goths confessed Christ under torture and was burned, about the year 372. His body, found unharmed by the fire, was carried to Mopsuestia in Cilicia, where his relics were honored.

“Equal-to-the-Apostles, Enlightener of Georgia”

St. Nino of Georgia

Equal-to-the-Apostles · Enlightener of Iberia

A young woman of Cappadocia who came to the kingdom of Iberia, the land of eastern Georgia, and by her prayer, her purity, and her preaching brought its king and people to Christ in the fourth century. She is honored as Equal-to-the-Apostles and the Enlightener of Georgia, and her cross of grapevine, bound with her own hair, is kept as a treasure of that Church.

“Blessed Xenia, Fool for Christ”

St. Xenia of St. Petersburg

Fool for Christ · Wonderworker of St. Petersburg

A widow of St. Petersburg who, when her husband died without Christian preparation, gave away all that she had, took up the folly of Christ, and wore his name and his clothing for the rest of her long life. Mocked and homeless, she wandered the city in prayer for decades, and God granted her foresight and the grace of helping all who came to her. Her chapel at the Smolensk cemetery remains one of the most beloved places of pilgrimage in Russia.

“Cassian the Roman”

St. John Cassian

Monk of East and West · Teacher of the ascetic life

A monk who gathered the wisdom of the Egyptian desert and carried it to the West. Trained among the Fathers of Scetis, ordained by St. John Chrysostom at Constantinople, he settled at last in Gaul and founded monasteries at Marseilles, setting down what he had learned in his Institutes and Conferences, the books by which the East taught the West how to pray.

“The Dialogist”

St. Gregory the Great

Pope of Rome · Father of the Moralia

A Roman of senatorial family who sold his inheritance to found monasteries, served as papal envoy at Constantinople, and was drawn against his will to the see of Rome. The East calls him the Dialogist, for his Dialogues on the Italian Fathers, and keeps his memory on the twelfth of March. His Moralia on Job is the commentary on that book for the whole Latin Middle Ages.

“Jerome of Stridon”

St. Jerome

Translator of the Scriptures · Ascetic of Bethlehem

The most learned scholar of the Latin Fathers, who left Rome for a cave beside the place of the Nativity and spent his life among the languages of Scripture. He translated the Bible into Latin from the Hebrew and the Greek, and his commentaries carried the exegesis of the Greek Fathers west.

“The Venerable”

St. Bede

Monk of Jarrow · Father of English history

Given to a monastery at seven years old and never leaving it, Bede turned a small house on the Northumbrian coast into a light for the whole West. He wrote commentaries on most of the Scriptures and the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and died dictating a translation of St John's Gospel.

“The Athanasius of the West”

St. Hilary of Poitiers

Bishop of Poitiers · Confessor against Arianism

A pagan philosopher who read his way to Christ through the Scriptures, became bishop of his own city, and was exiled to Asia Minor for refusing to condemn St Athanasius. In exile he learned the Greek theology of the Trinity and brought it back to the Latin West.

“Ambrose of Milan”

St. Ambrose

Bishop of Milan · Teacher of emperors

The governor who went to keep order at a disputed episcopal election and was acclaimed bishop by the crowd, though not yet baptized. He gave the Church of Milan its hymns, stood up to emperors, and by his preaching brought St Augustine to the font.

“Victorinus the Martyr”

St. Victorinus of Pettau

Bishop and martyr · Earliest Latin commentator

Bishop of Pettau in Pannonia and the earliest Latin writer to comment on the Scriptures, martyred in the persecution of Diocletian. His commentary on the Apocalypse is the oldest that survives, and the only patristic commentary on that book this library carries.

St. Isidore of Seville

Bishop of Seville · The last of the ancient Fathers

Bishop of Seville in Visigothic Spain, who gathered what was left of ancient learning into the Etymologies and saved it for the centuries that followed. The Catena quotes him twice, and both citations are from that book and from his Sentences.

“The Golden-Worded”

St. Peter Chrysologus

Bishop of Ravenna · Preacher of short sermons

Bishop of Ravenna when it was the seat of the Western emperors, called the Golden-Worded for his preaching. He kept his sermons deliberately short, saying that the hearers' attention was a thing to be spent carefully, and nearly two hundred of them survive.

“Abbot of Russia, the Wonderworker”

St. Sergius of Radonezh

Abbot of the Holy Trinity · Father of Russian monasticism

The great abbot and wonderworker who renewed the monastic life of Rus and became the spiritual father of his whole people. From a cell in the forest of Radonezh grew the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, the heart of Russian monasticism, and from his disciples a host of monasteries across the north. He blessed the Grand Prince before the Battle of Kulikovo and is honored as the protector of the Russian land.

St. Nicholas Cabasilas

Theologian of the Mysteries · Lay teacher of Thessalonica

A layman of fourteenth-century Thessalonica and one of the most luminous theologians of the Church, the author of The Life in Christ and the Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. A friend of St. Gregory Palamas and a defender of the hesychasts, he taught that the whole of salvation is given to us through the Mysteries, and that the life of grace is nothing other than the life of Christ Himself living in the baptized.

St. Silouan the Athonite

Monk of Mount Athos · He who prayed for the whole world

A Russian peasant who became a monk of the Holy Mountain and one of the great teachers of prayer of the modern age, though he was nearly unlettered. Through long years of struggle and the words given him by the Lord, Keep thy mind in hell and despair not, he was brought to a deep humility and to a ceaseless prayer of love and tears for the whole world, even for the enemies of God.

“The Wonderworker”

St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco

Bishop of Shanghai and San Francisco · Wonderworker of the diaspora

A bishop of the Russian emigration whose ascetic labors and miracles followed his scattered flock from China across the world to America. He slept little and never in a bed, prayed through the nights, gathered orphans, and was known in his own lifetime as a wonderworker and a fool for Christ. His incorrupt relics rest in San Francisco, and he is among the most beloved saints of recent times.

“The Elder Porphyrios”

St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia

Elder of Athos and Athens · Seer of hearts

A Greek elder of our own time, granted from his youth a rare gift of grace by which he saw into hearts and across distances and discerned the hidden causes of sickness of body and soul. For decades a humble confessor at a clinic in Athens, he led countless people to Christ not by severity but by love and by the beauty of creation, and his counsels are gathered in the book Wounded by Love.

“The Elder Iakovos Tsalikis”

St. Iakovos of Evia

Abbot of the Monastery of St. David · Shepherd of Evia

A humble abbot of the Monastery of St. David the Elder on the island of Evia, who served the divine services with the awareness of the angels and the saints present around him, and to whom God gave deep discernment, the casting out of demons, and a fatherly tenderness that drew the suffering of all Greece to his door.

“Sophrony Sakharov”

St. Sophrony of Essex

Disciple of St. Silouan · Founder of the monastery in Essex

A Russian painter who forsook his art for the knowledge of God, became on Mount Athos the disciple of St. Silouan and the keeper of his words, and at the last founded a monastery in England. His writings on the vision of the Uncreated Light, on the prayer that the will of God be done, and on the person made in the image of God have shaped Orthodox spiritual life across the West.

“The Apologist”

St. Quadratus of Athens

The earliest of the apologists · Bishop of Athens

Honored as the earliest of the Christian apologists, who presented a written defense of the faith to the Emperor Hadrian when the Church was being slandered and persecuted. Of his Apology a single passage survives, preserved by Eusebius, in which he points to the works of the Saviour, the healed and the raised who lived on into his own day, as proof that they were no illusion.

“Equal-to-the-Apostles, the New Hieromartyr”

St. Cosmas of Aetolia

Preacher and teacher of the enslaved Greeks · Martyr

A monk of Mount Athos who became the great itinerant preacher of the Greek people under the Turkish yoke, traveling on foot through Greece and Albania to call the people back to faith, prayer, and learning, founding hundreds of schools, and crowning his labor with a martyr's death. He is honored as Equal-to-the-Apostles.

“Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain”

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite

Compiler of the Philokalia · Teacher of the Church

A monk of Mount Athos of immense learning and humility who gathered, edited, and gave to the Church a great library of its own treasures: the Philokalia of the neptic Fathers, the canonical Rudder, the Unseen Warfare, the Spiritual Exercises, and many lives and commentaries. Through his labors the inner tradition of prayer of the Eastern Church was preserved and spread.

“Theophan the Recluse of Vysha”

St. Theophan the Recluse

Bishop and recluse · Teacher of the spiritual life

A Russian bishop who laid down his see to enter a hermitage and live for twenty-eight years in seclusion, and who from that hiddenness became one of the great spiritual teachers of his nation. He rendered the Philokalia into Russian and poured out, in books and in thousands of letters, a clear and fatherly teaching on the life of prayer and the path of salvation.

“The Hieromartyr of Jacob's Well”

St. Philoumenos of Jacob's Well

Guardian of Jacob's Well · New hieromartyr

A Cypriot monk of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre who served as the guardian of the shrine of Jacob's Well in Samaria, where the Lord spoke with the woman of Samaria. There, refusing to remove the crosses and icons of the holy place, he was murdered while he served the evening prayer, and is honored as a new hieromartyr; his relics were found incorrupt.

“Gabriel the Fool-for-Christ and Confessor”

St. Gabriel of Georgia

Fool for Christ and confessor · Wonderworker of Georgia

A monk of Georgia who took up the hard folly of Christ in the years of Soviet atheism, building a church with his own hands from cast-off scraps, openly confessing the faith when it cost everything, and pouring out on all who came to him a fierce and tender love. Beaten, imprisoned, and held for a madman, he became after his repose one of the most beloved saints of the Georgian people.

“Bishop and Martyr of Carthage”

St. Cyprian of Carthage

Rhetor · Bishop of Carthage · Martyr under Valerian · Father of the Latin Church

A wealthy teacher of rhetoric at Carthage who was baptized in middle life, sold his gardens for the poor, and was made bishop by the acclamation of the people two years later. He governed the African church through the Decian persecution, the schisms over the lapsed, and a plague in which he set the Christians of Carthage to nurse the pagans who had called for their deaths. He wrote On the Unity of the Church, quarreled hard with Rome and stayed in communion with it, and was beheaded under Valerian.

“Lawrence of Rome”

St. Lawrence the Archdeacon

Archdeacon of Rome · Martyr under Valerian

Archdeacon of the church of Rome under Sixtus II, who held the alms of the city and knew by name everyone the Church was feeding. Ordered by the prefect to hand over the treasures of the Church, he gave everything away to the poor and then produced the poor themselves as the treasure. He was killed four days after his bishop, in August of 258, and buried on the Via Tiburtina, where Constantine built a basilica over the grave.

“Sixtus II”

St. Sixtus, Pope of Rome

Bishop of Rome · Peacemaker · Martyr under Valerian

Bishop of Rome for about eleven months. He inherited the rebaptism quarrel that had nearly broken communion between Rome and the churches of Africa and Asia Minor, and he settled it by declining to press it, which is a small thing to have done and prevented a large disaster. Valerian's second edict found him presiding at the liturgy in a cemetery on the Appian Way, and he was killed in the chair with four of his deacons.

“The Seven Holy Youths and Solomonia”

The Holy Maccabean Martyrs

Seven brothers, their mother Solomonia, and their teacher Eleazar · Martyrs under Antiochus Epiphanes

Seven brothers tortured to death in a single day in front of their mother, who watched all seven and encouraged each of them, and died last; with them the aged scribe Eleazar, who refused even to pretend to eat what the Law forbade, on the ground that the young would learn the pretense. They are the only saints in the calendar who died before the Nativity, and they died confessing the resurrection of the body.

“Abba Poemen”

St. Pimen the Great

Father of Scetis · The most quoted elder of the desert

An Egyptian monk who held no office, founded nothing, and wrote nothing, and who is nonetheless the most cited man in the whole literature of the desert: roughly a quarter of the alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers are his. His name means shepherd. He is severe about judgment and gentle with the person judged, and he corrected the extremists of his own generation by telling monks to eat and to sleep.

“Elder of Spruce Island”

St. Herman of Alaska

Monk of Valaam · Wonderworker of All America · First saint glorified in North America

One of ten monks sent from Valaam across Siberia and the Pacific in 1794 to found the first Orthodox mission in North America. Within a decade the others were dead, recalled, or worn out, and he was the mission. He stayed forty three years, never took ordination, taught and fed the orphans of the epidemics, and spent four decades filing complaints against the Russian-American Company on behalf of the Aleut and Alutiiq people it was destroying.

“Tikhon of Voronezh”

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

Bishop of Voronezh · Teacher of the Russian Church · Recluse of Zadonsk

Born into a poverty so complete that his family nearly gave him away for food, he climbed the whole of the eighteenth-century Russian church ladder, reached a bishopric before forty, and then resigned it at forty three to live fourteen years as an ordinary monk at Zadonsk. Almost everything he wrote comes from those years, including On True Christianity and A Spiritual Treasury Gathered from the World.

“Addai, Apostle of the Seventy”

St. Thaddeus of Edessa

One of the Seventy · Apostle of Edessa and Mesopotamia

One of the Seventy, sent by the Apostle Thomas to Edessa on the eastern edge of the Roman world, where according to the documents Eusebius says he found in the city archive he healed King Abgar and brought the royal house to the faith. The Syriac churches call him Mar Addai and trace their foundation to him. He is not the Apostle Jude Thaddeus, one of the Twelve, whom the Menaion commemorates separately.

“Titus of the Seventy”

St. Titus, Bishop of Crete

Companion of the Apostle Paul · First bishop of Gortyna · One of the Seventy

A Greek converted through Paul and taken by him to Jerusalem as the living test case for whether a Gentile must become a Jew first. Paul trusted him with the two hardest assignments he had, the collection and Corinth, and left him in Crete to appoint presbyters in every city. The Epistle to Titus is the working brief for that job. He is the patron saint of Crete.

“Euplus the Deacon”

St. Euplus of Catania

Deacon of Catania · Martyr under Diocletian

A deacon of Catania in Sicily who, in a persecution whose first edict ordered the Scriptures handed over and burned, walked to the governor's council chamber carrying the book of the Gospels and called out that he was a Christian. His Acts are among the small group of martyr records that historians of every confession treat as essentially what was said in the room.

“The Seven Youths of Ephesus”

The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus

Maximilian, Jamblichus, Martinian, John, Dionysius, Exacustodianus and Antoninus · Confessors under Decius

Seven young men of Ephesus who refused to sacrifice under Decius, hid in a cave above the city, and were sealed inside; and who, the tradition says, woke about two hundred years later in the reign of Theodosius the Second, at a moment when the Church was arguing over whether the body rises. The Church commemorates them as a sign rather than as a biography.

“Fool for Christ of Moscow”

St. Basil the Blessed

Fool for Christ · Wonderworker of Moscow

A shoemaker's apprentice who left the trade to walk the streets of Moscow naked in the winter for over sixty years, taking on the folly of Christ. He smashed goods in the market and was found to have been destroying spoiled food, wept at the doors of houses where people were feasting, and was the one man in Russia who could rebuke Ivan the Terrible to his face and be listened to.

“Isaac, Dalmatus and Faustus”

Sts. Isaac, Dalmatus and Faustus

Founders of the Dalmatian monastery at Constantinople · Confessors

Three generations of one monastery. Isaac came out of the desert to stand in front of the Arian emperor Valens as he rode out to the Gothic war and tell him he would not come back, which he did not. Dalmatus, an officer of the imperial guard, gave up his commission to become his disciple and gave the house its name. Faustus was Dalmatus's son, who came with him.

“Anthony of Novgorod”

St. Anthony the Roman

Founder of the Nativity monastery at Novgorod

A wealthy Roman who gave his goods away, lived on a rock at the edge of the sea, and, in the account Novgorod has told for nine centuries, was carried on that rock up the Neva to Novgorod in the year 1106. He founded the monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos there and was its abbot for forty years.

“The Soldier of a Hundred and Ten Years”

St. Eusignius of Antioch

Soldier of the Roman armies · Martyr under Julian

A soldier who served sixty years in the Roman armies, who said he had seen the Cross in the sky over Constantine's camp with his own eyes, and who retired to Antioch and lived to a hundred and ten. When Julian the Apostate came through the city and began restoring the sacrifices, this very old man told him to his face what his own uncle had seen, and was beheaded for it.

“Dometius of Nisibis”

St. Dometius the Persian

Convert from the Magi · Monk of Nisibis · Martyr under Julian

A Persian raised in the religion of the Magi who became a Christian, fled his own country for Nisibis on the Roman frontier, and became a monk. He lived at last in a cave in the mountains near Cyrrhus, healing those who came, and was stoned to death there with two of his disciples on the order of Julian the Apostate.

“Abba Or”

St. Or of the Thebaid

Desert Father of the Thebaid · Father of a thousand monks

One of the great fathers of the Egyptian desert, described by Palladius and by the Historia Monachorum as an old man with a snow-white beard who governed about a thousand monks in the Thebaid and whose face, they say, was that of an angel. He had spent his first years alone in the deep desert eating herbs, and could not read until, the account says, he was given the Scriptures by heart.

“Aemilian the Confessor”

St. Aemilian, Bishop of Cyzicus

Bishop of Cyzicus · Confessor for the holy icons

Bishop of Cyzicus in the second iconoclast crisis. Summoned to the palace with the other bishops in 815 and ordered to accept the removal of the icons, he was the one who answered first and answered plainly, that a matter of the faith of the Church is not settled in a palace, and he was deposed and exiled and died there.

“Myron the Wonderworker”

St. Myron, Bishop of Crete

Farmer · Bishop of Crete · Wonderworker

A Cretan farmer who worked his own land and gave most of what it produced away, and who was made bishop of the island for it. The story Crete has kept about him is the one where he caught thieves in his own threshing floor, found they could not lift the sacks they had filled, helped them load the grain onto their backs, and told them not to tell anyone.

“Theodore and Vasily of the Kiev Caves”

Sts. Theodore and Vasily of the Kiev Caves

Monks of the Caves · Martyrs for a treasure that was not theirs

Two monks of the Kiev Caves, one a wealthy man who had given everything away and then found buried treasure in his own cell and was tormented by it, the other the friend who talked him into burying it again. A prince heard the story, wanted the money, and had them both tortured to death in a single night when they would not say where it was.

“Anicetus and Photius of Nicomedia”

Sts. Photius and Anicetus

Martyrs of Nicomedia under Diocletian

An uncle and his nephew. Anicetus was a magistrate of Nicomedia who, when Diocletian set up the instruments of torture in the public square and offered rewards for informers, walked out in front of the assembly and said he was a Christian. Photius, his nephew, came out of the crowd and embraced him, and the two were killed together after three years in prison.

“Diomedes of Tarsus”

St. Diomedes the Physician

Physician of Tarsus · Unmercenary · Martyr under Diocletian

A physician of Tarsus in Cilicia who treated bodies for nothing and used the visit to speak about Christ, and who baptized a great many of the people he had healed. He was arrested under Diocletian and died on the road before the sentence could be carried out, and the soldiers beheaded the body anyway.

“Myron the Presbyter”

St. Myron of Cyzicus

Presbyter of Achaia · Martyr under Decius

A presbyter of a good and wealthy family, gentle by disposition, who was serving the liturgy on the feast of the Nativity when soldiers came into the church to take his congregation. He went out and stood between them, and the persecution turned on him instead.

“The Stonemasons of Illyricum”

Sts. Floros and Lauros

Twin brothers · Stonemasons · Martyrs of Illyricum

Twin brothers, stonemasons by trade, who were hired to build a pagan temple in Illyricum, spent their wages on the poor as they earned them, and when the building was finished set a cross in it, gathered the local Christians, and kept vigil in it all night. They were thrown alive into a dry well and covered over.

“Andrew the Commander”

St. Andrew Stratelates

Roman commander in Syria · Martyr with 2,593 soldiers

A Roman officer in Syria under Maximian who, sent against a much larger Persian force with a small command, told his men that the gods of the empire were nothing and that they should call on Christ, and won. He and the soldiers who had called on Christ with him were baptized, dismissed the service, and were hunted down and killed in the Cilician mountains.

“Abraham the Preacher”

St. Abraham of Smolensk

Priest-monk of Smolensk · Preacher · Wonderworker

A priest-monk of Smolensk who preached constantly, in a century when preaching in Rus was rare, and drew such crowds that the clergy of the city accused him of heresy and of leading the people astray. He was tried, forbidden to serve, and vindicated when a drought that had gripped the city broke on the day he was restored.

“Agathonicus and companions”

St. Agathonicus of Nicomedia

Martyr under Maximian · Killed at Selymbria

A man of noble family at Nicomedia who converted a number of pagans, including some of the imperial household, and was taken with several companions when the persecution reached them. They were marched west toward the capital and killed on the road at Selymbria in Thrace.

“Lupus the Servant”

St. Lupus of Thessaloniki

Servant of St. Demetrius · Martyr under Maximian

The servant of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, who was with him at the end. He dipped his master's ring and the hem of his garment in the blood, and the accounts say that everything he touched with them afterward was healed, until the authorities understood where it was coming from and took him too.

“Peter the Wonderworker”

St. Peter, Metropolitan of Moscow

Metropolitan of All Rus · The hierarch who moved the see to Moscow

Metropolitan of all Rus in the years when the country was under the Horde and had no capital worth the name. He moved his residence to Moscow, then a minor town, and told its prince to build a stone cathedral to the Dormition and that the city would rise above all the others. He was buried in the wall of it before it was finished.

“Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia”

Sts. Adrian and Natalia

Officer of the imperial court and his wife · Martyrs of Nicomedia

The head of the imperial court's judicial office at Nicomedia, twenty eight years old and a pagan, who watched twenty three Christians being tortured, asked them what they expected to get for it, and put his own name on the register. His wife Natalia, a secret Christian, spent the weeks that followed getting into the prison in disguise to keep him from weakening.

“Phanourios of Rhodes”

St. Phanourios the Newly-Revealed

Great-martyr · Made known by his icon at Rhodes

A martyr about whom nothing was known until his icon was dug out of a ruined church at Rhodes in the fifteenth century, with twelve scenes of his trial and death painted around him and his name written above. The Church accepted the icon as the record, and has venerated him ever since on the evidence of a painting.

“Job of Pochaev”

St. Job of Pochaev

Abbot of Pochaev · Defender of Orthodoxy in Volhynia · Printer

Abbot of Pochaev in the century when the Union of Brest was being pressed on the Orthodox of the Polish-Lithuanian lands by law and by force. He held the monastery, ran its press, wrote against the Union, and defended the house through twenty years of litigation and armed raids. He lived past a hundred.

“Alexander of Svir”

St. Alexander of Svir

Abbot of the Holy Trinity on the Svir · Seer of the Holy Trinity

A monk of Valaam who went off alone into the forest between Lakes Ladoga and Onega and lived there seven years without seeing anyone. He is the only saint of the Russian Church to whom the tradition ascribes an appearance of the Holy Trinity as three men, as to Abraham at Mamre, and the monastery he founded on the river Svir became one of the great houses of the Russian north.

“Three Patriarchs of Constantinople”

Sts. Alexander, John and Paul the New

Patriarchs of Constantinople · Commemorated together

Three patriarchs of the capital, four centuries apart, kept on one day: Alexander, who was patriarch when Arius was to be received back into communion and prayed instead; John the Faster, who was the first to be called Ecumenical Patriarch and the most ascetic man ever to hold the office; and Paul the Fourth, who served under the iconoclasts, could not bear it, and resigned.

“The First Martyr”

St. Stephen the Protomartyr

First of the Seven Deacons · First martyr of the Church · Archdeacon

The first of the seven men the apostles laid hands on to serve the tables of the Jerusalem church, and the first Christian to be killed for the Name. His defense before the Sanhedrin is the longest speech in the Book of Acts, and Saul of Tarsus was standing there holding the coats.

“Micah the Morasthite”

The Prophet Micah

One of the Twelve Minor Prophets · Contemporary of Isaiah

A prophet of the small town of Moresheth in the Judean lowlands, who prophesied under Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, in the years the northern kingdom fell to Assyria. He named Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Ruler whose goings forth have been from of old, seven hundred years before the Magi were sent there on the strength of it.

“Samuel the Seer”

The Prophet Samuel

Last of the Judges · The prophet who anointed Saul and David

Asked of God by a barren woman and given back to Him, he grew up sleeping in the sanctuary at Shiloh and was called by name in the night while he was still a boy. He was the last of the judges of Israel, the prophet who anointed both its first king and its greatest, and the one who told Saul that obedience is better than sacrifice.

St. George the Trophy-bearer

Soldier of the Roman army · Great-martyr · Trophy-bearer

An officer of the Roman army who refused to renounce Christ during the persecution under Diocletian and was beheaded at Nicomedia. He is counted among the great-martyrs and called the Trophy-bearer.

“The First of the Pillar-Saints”

St. Symeon the Stylite

Pillar-saint · Ascetic of Syria · The Elder

The Syrian ascetic who withdrew to the top of a pillar and stayed there some thirty-six years, teaching and judging disputes from it. He is the first of the pillar-saints, and the whole stylite way is named after him.

St. Daniel the Stylite

Pillar-saint · Ascetic of Constantinople

A Syrian who saw Symeon the Stylite on his pillar, took up the same life near Constantinople, and was consulted there by two emperors.

“Of the Wonderful Mountain”

St. Symeon Stylites the Younger

Pillar-saint · Ascetic of the Wonderful Mountain

Born at Antioch and on a pillar from childhood, he spent his life on the height south-west of the city that came to be called the Wonderful Mountain. He is the younger of the two great Symeons of the pillar.

St. Alypius the Stylite

Pillar-saint · Ascetic of Paphlagonia

A pillar-saint of Paphlagonia who stood upright on his pillar for fifty-three years, and when his legs would no longer hold him, spent his last fourteen years lying on his side upon it.