Saints
“Phanourios of Rhodes”
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.
His life
The account is that in the years of the Frankish rule at Rhodes, workmen clearing rubble outside the walls uncovered the ruins of a church and, in it, a number of icons, all of them ruined by time except one, which was intact.
It showed a young soldier holding a cross with a lighted candle set in it, and around him twelve scenes: standing before the judge, beaten, in prison, scraped, burned, thrown to the beasts, crushed under a stone, and at the last standing in the fire. His name was written on it, Phanourios, and the name itself means the one who reveals, or the one made manifest.
The metropolitan of Rhodes, Nilus, took the icon as sufficient and asked leave of the Latin authorities to restore the church, which was given. No Life, no Acts and no date have ever been recovered. What the Church has of him is the icon and the twelve scenes on it.
He is invoked for things that are lost, which is a play on his name that has become part of the tradition, and the loaf called the phanouropita is baked for his feast and given away, by custom in memory of his mother. The Church keeps his memory on the twenty seventh of August.
Holy St. Phanourios the Newly-Revealed, pray to God for us.