Hieromartyr Anthimus, Bishop of Nicomedia

Saints commemorated

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  Hieromartyr Anthimus, Bishop of Nicomedia

  Anthimus was bishop of Nicomedia, Diocletian's eastern capital, when the Great Persecution broke upon the Church there at the opening of the fourth century. After fire in the imperial palace was blamed on the Christians and his flock was slaughtered in great numbers, he governed the survivors from hiding, strengthening the confessors by letter, until soldiers tracked him down; he fed his own captors, revealed himself to them, and went willingly to interrogation, torture, and beheading (302 or 303). Eusebius of Caesarea records his martyrdom within living memory. He is commemorated on September 3 together with the companions of his suffering.

• Holy Martyr Basilissa (309)

  Basilissa was a girl of Nicomedia, nine years old in the received accounts, who confessed Christ before the governor Alexander during the persecutions at the opening of the fourth century. Scourged and given over to fire and to wild beasts, she remained unharmed, and her constancy so shook the governor that he repented, believed, and was baptized. Basilissa herself died shortly afterwards in peace, praying upon a rock outside the city, where tradition says a spring of water rose at her prayer; the Church nonetheless numbers her among the martyrs, crowned by her sufferings though not slain by them. She is commemorated on September 3.

• Our Holy Father Joannicius, Archbishop and first Patriarch of Serbia (1354)

  Joannicius (†1349) carried the Serbian Church across its great threshold: a chancery man — logothete (secretary) at the court of the Serbian king — he was made Archbishop of Peć in 1339, and in 1346, when Stefan Dušan required an emperor's crown and an emperor requires a patriarch, a council of the Serbian hierarchs with the Bulgarian Patriarch's concurrence raised the archbishopric to a patriarchate and Joannicius to be first Patriarch of the Serbs; a week later he crowned Dušan Tsar at Skopje. He guided the Church through the codifying years of Dušan's law-book, and reposed on 3 September 1349, buried in the church of the Holy Apostles at Peć, where the patriarchs he began are buried around him.

• Aristion of Alexandria in Cilicia

  Aristion (second century) was bishop of Alexandria in Cilicia — the "lesser Alexandria" by the gulf of Issus, not the Egyptian metropolis — and died in it a martyr by fire. Born at Aribazo in Syria at the beginning of the second century, he was won to Christ in his youth by the future martyr Anthony, then a boy of ten from his own town; grown old in the episcopate, he was arrested by the Roman eparch, refused flattery and threats alike, and was cast into a furnace, where witnesses heard him singing hymns in the fire until his last breath. His flock gathered his bones and hid them; the place is unknown to this day.

• John the Hairy of Rostov

  Blessed John, called the Hairy for the abundant hair he wore uncut and the Merciful for the healings at his grave, was a fool-for-Christ at Rostov in the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Homeless by choice, sheltering sometimes with his spiritual father or with pious widows, he bore the mockery of the town in unceasing prayer, and reposed on 3 September 1580; he was buried, as he asked, beyond the altar of the church of Saint Blaise. The healings that flowed at once from his grave gave him the second epithet of John the Merciful of Alexandria, whose memory the Rostov tradition joined to his; among those his counsel formed was Irenarchus the recluse of Rostov.

• Phoebe of Cenchreae

  Phoebe is the woman whom the Apostle Paul commends at the head of the greetings of his Epistle to the Romans: "our sister, who is a deacon of the church at Cenchreae… for she has been a patron of many, and of myself as well" (Romans 16:1–2). A Christian of the eastern port of Corinth in the middle of the first century, she is by ancient tradition the bearer who carried the Epistle to the Romans to its destination, and the Church has ever honoured her as the prototype of the order of deaconesses. Beyond Paul's two verses the record of her life is silent; she is commemorated on September 3.

• Polydorus of Cyprus

  Polydorus (†1794), a merchant's son of Nicosia, is one of the new-martyrs of the Ottoman world whose crown was won out of a fall: drawn into drink and bad company in the Levant trade, he denied Christ in an hour of weakness — and could not live with it. The pattern of the new-martyrs' repentance carried him from confessor to confessor until, resolved to wash the denial in blood, he presented himself at New Ephesus (Kuşadası) before the Turkish judge, confessed Christ, and revoked his apostasy. Neither promises nor tortures moved him, and he was hanged on 3 September 1794, the Church receiving him at once among the new-martyrs.

• Theoctistus of Palestine

  Theoctistus (died 467) was one of the founding fathers of Palestinian desert monasticism, remembered above all as the inseparable companion of Euthymius the Great. Hermits together at the lavra of Pharan, the two withdrew about the year 411 to a cave in the gorge of Wadi Mukellik in the Judean wilderness, which grew into a coenobium that Theoctistus governed for more than half a century. When Euthymius founded his own lavra nearby, every young aspirant — among them the young Sabas the Sanctified — was formed first under Theoctistus's care. He reposed in extreme old age on September 3, mourned by the aged Euthymius and buried in the presence of the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

• Hereswith

  Hereswith (died c. 690) was a princess of the Northumbrian royal house of Deira — daughter of Hereric, King Edwin's nephew, and elder sister of Hilda, the great abbess of Whitby. Married into the Wuffing royal house of East Anglia, she was the mother of Aldwulf, king of the East Angles. She entered the monastic life before her famous sister did: Bede records that by about 647, when Hilda resolved to leave the world, Hereswith was already living under the rule at Chelles near Paris, "waiting for her eternal reward," and it was her example that first drew Hilda toward Gaul. She remained at Chelles until her death, conventionally placed about 690; her feast is kept on September 3.

• Mac Nisse of Connor

  Mac Nisse (Latin Macanisius, died c. 514) is the founder-patron of the see of Connor in what is now County Antrim, Ireland — by tradition its first abbot-bishop. Born Óengus, he is called Mac Nisse after his mother Ness, and the tradition of his church makes him a disciple of Patrick, baptised by him and taught the psalms by him. His first foundation is placed by local tradition at the dísert ("desert," hermitage) of Connor, a site later called Kells — the Kells in Antrim, not the famous Columban abbey in Meath — which is why calendar lines style him "abbot of Kells." The Irish annals record his death between 506 and 514; the martyrologies keep him on September 3.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. MacNis, abbot of Kells (c.514)
• St. Gregory the Great (the Dialogist), Apostle of the English 604

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