Sts. Floros and Lauros

They were brothers, said to be twins, trained in stonecutting at Byzantium under two Christian masters who were themselves martyred. They moved on to Illyricum and worked there.

The governor of the province hired them to build a temple. They took the wage and gave it away to the poor of the district as fast as it came in, and when the work was finished they set a cross in the completed building, called together the Christians of the place, and spent the night there in prayer.

The account says that the son of the pagan priest had been injured on the site and was healed, and that the priest and his son were converted, and that the whole company of local Christians, some hundreds, were burned. Floros and Lauros were sent to the governor of the region, who had them thrown into a deep dry well and the mouth of it filled in.

Their relics were found uncorrupted many years later and translated to Constantinople. In the Russian tradition they became, for reasons that belong to folk piety rather than to the Life, the patrons of horses, and the eighteenth of August was for centuries the day the horses were blessed.