Trans. Rel. Ven. Cyrus and John

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Trans. Rel. Ven. Cyrus and John

  Cyrus and John (†c. 311) are among the most beloved of the holy unmercenaries — the anargyroi, physicians who healed without payment in the name of Christ. Cyrus was a renowned physician of Alexandria who, when the persecution of Diocletian broke out, withdrew to the Arabian desert and there healed souls and bodies by prayer alone; John, a soldier of Edessa, sought him out and became his companion in the ascetic and healing life. Learning that a Christian woman, Athanasia, and her three young daughters — Theoctiste, Theodota and Eudoxia — had been seized at Canopus near Alexandria, the two came to strengthen them for their confession, were themselves arrested, and after cruel tortures were beheaded together with the mother and her daughters, about the year 311. Their relics, first laid in the church of the Evangelist Mark at Alexandria, were translated by Cyril of Alexandria to Menouthis, where their shrine displaced a famous pagan healing-cult and became one of the great healing sanctuaries of the Christian East — the setting of the Miracles recorded by Sophronius of Jerusalem. They are kept on January 31, and on June 28 for the translation of their relics.

• Sts Sergius and Herman (1353), abbots of Valaam

  Sergius and Herman are venerated as the founders of the Monastery of the Transfiguration on Valaam, the great island house in the northern reaches of Lake Ladoga that became the mother of monasticism for the whole Karelian north and, through its children, for Solovki, Konevets, Ondrusov and at last Alaska. Tradition makes Sergius a Greek monk who came northward as a missionary among the pagan Karelians and Herman his companion, sometimes named as a Karelian convert; they settled on the rocky archipelago, gathered a brotherhood under a rule of fasting, vigil and manual labour, and reposed there — the service books say about the year 1353. No Life of them survives, and the dating of their coming is one of the vexed questions of Russian church history, ranging from the tenth century to the end of the fourteenth. Their relics lie hidden beneath the floor of the monastery cathedral, twice carried to Novgorod for safety from Swedish raids and twice brought home. The Church keeps their memory on June 28, and on September 11 the return of their relics to the island.

• Synaxis of the Icon of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos "Of the Three Hands"

• Our Holy Father Sennuphius the Standard-Bearer (4th c.)

• Donagus of Libya

  Donagus — the name appears in the English calendars as Donatus — is a hieromartyr, a priest or bishop put to death for Christ, commemorated on June 28 and located by the tradition in Libya, the Greek name for the African provinces west of Egypt. No account of his passion survives; the synaxarion preserves his name, his rank, and his country.

• Macedonius the Martyr

  Macedonius is a martyr of the Greek synaxarion of June 28, named without country, date, or account of his passion. The commemoration stands in the middle of a group of similarly bare martyr-notices for the day — a hieromartyr in Libya, two children, three martyrs of Galatia, seventy martyrs of Scythopolis — which together represent the layer of the Constantinopolitan synaxarion in which the name alone survived.

• Magnus the Venerable

  Magnus is an ascetic of the Greek synaxarion of June 28 of whom one thing only is recorded, and it is the thing the Church thought worth recording: that he reposed in peace while he was praying. The notice preserves no country, no century, no monastery and no deed. The manner of his death is his whole memorial, and it is a considerable one — the tradition sets him among those whom the Lord found watching.

• Moses the Anchorite

  Moses the Anchorite is one of the ascetics of the Greek synaxarion whose whole surviving memory is a single line: that he struggled in a manner pleasing to God and fell asleep in peace. He is commemorated on June 28. Neither his country, his century, nor the desert in which he lived is transmitted, and the Church honours him as she honours many of the anchorites — by name only, without a story, on the principle that the name written in the book of life is enough.

• Pappias the Martyr

  Pappias suffered in the great persecution of Diocletian and Maximian at the beginning of the fourth century — the last and fiercest of the persecutions, in which, as the notice of his day observes, Christians were killed in numbers beyond counting. Of his own passion the synaxarion preserves the essential outline and nothing more: that he confessed Christ before the magistrate, was imprisoned and tortured, remained unmoved in the piety of his fathers, and was at last beheaded. He is commemorated on June 28.

• Paul the Physician of Corinth

  Paul, called the Physician, was a monk of Corinth who was tonsured in his youth and lived out his life in the monastic struggle. His memory rests on a single story of great beauty: a woman of the neighbourhood, having borne a child out of wedlock, laid the blame on him, and the elder — rather than defend himself — took the accusation and the infant alike upon himself with joy, until, his brethren reproaching him for a broken vow, he bade the newborn child name its own father before them all, and the infant spoke and pointed to a blacksmith of the town. For that patience under slander God gave him the gift of healing the sick, from which comes the surname the calendar keeps. He reposed in peace at the age of seventy, and the Church honours him on June 28.

• Plutarch and Companions

  Plutarch, Serenus, Heraclides, Heron, a second Serenus and the woman Heraïs were pupils of the catechetical school of Alexandria who were put to death in the persecution of Septimius Severus, about the years 202–203, when their teacher — the young Origen, not yet twenty and newly set over the school — walked with each of them to the place of execution. Their names and the manner of their deaths are preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea, who took them from Origen's own circle: Plutarch the first to suffer, Serenus perfected by fire, Heraclides and Heron beheaded while still a catechumen and a neophyte, a second Serenus beheaded after torture, and Heraïs, a woman under instruction, who "received her baptism in fire." With them the Greek synaxarion of June 28 names Potamiaena and her mother Marcella, who died in the same persecution and whose entry is kept at the seventh of the month. The company is one of the earliest and best-documented martyrdoms of the Alexandrian church.

• Potamiaena of Alexandria

  Potamiaena was a young Christian woman of Alexandria, in the household of a pagan master who desired her and could not have her. To his demands she answered — in the form the tradition has kept — that she was a Christian, and that she valued her honour above her life; and when he threatened her with the courts she told him plainly that she would rather die. He denounced her to the prefect of Egypt, who offered her the usual choice and, when she refused, had her lowered into a cauldron of boiling pitch, in which she died, keeping both her virginity and her faith; the older and better witness adds that her mother Marcella was burned with her, and that the executioner Basilides was converted by what he had seen and was himself martyred soon after, Potamiaena having appeared to him in the night and set a crown upon his head. The Byzantine calendars keep her on June 7, the Latin on June 28.

• Sergius the Magistros

  Sergius, called the Magistros from the high Byzantine dignity he held, was a nobleman of Niketia in Paphlagonia, on the Black Sea coast near Amastris, and a kinsman of the empress Theodora, wife of the last iconoclast emperor Theophilus. In a court committed to the war against the holy images he remained openly Orthodox: he sheltered those hunted for the icons, laboured for their restoration, and after the emperor's death used his standing with Theodora to press for the council that restored the icons in 843. He ended his life in Crete, where he is especially honoured, reposing about the year 866; first buried at the monastery that bore his title, his relics were afterwards translated to the monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos near Nicomedia, the house founded from his own town. The Church keeps him on June 28 as a confessor.

• Seventy Martyrs of Scythopolis

  A company of seventy martyrs who suffered at Scythopolis in Palestine — the Greek city on the site of biblical Beth-shean, in the Jordan valley below Galilee — is commemorated in the Greek synaxarion on June 28. Their names, the persecution in which they died and the manner of their deaths are not transmitted; only the number, the place, and the day.

• Three Martyrs of Galatia

  Three martyrs who suffered in Galatia, the inland province of Asia Minor evangelised by the Apostle Paul, are commemorated in the Greek synaxarion on June 28. Their names are not transmitted, nor the persecution, nor the manner of their death; the Church keeps them by their number and their country.

• Two Children Martyred for Christ

  Among the commemorations of June 28 the Greek synaxarion names two children who were put to death for Christ, the tradition specifying that they were crucified. Their names, their country and the persecution in which they suffered are not transmitted. They stand in the calendar as witnesses of the Church's oldest conviction about the martyrdom of the young: that the confession of a child is a confession, and that the crown does not wait upon years.

• Xenophon of Robeika

  Xenophon of Robeika (died 1262) was a Russian monastic of the Novgorod tradition, a disciple of the school of Varlaam of Khutyn who, after serving as abbot of the great Khutyn monastery, withdrew to seek a stricter solitude and founded a monastery of Saint Nicholas on the Robeika river, some miles from Novgorod. He is venerated as the founder-abbot of that house and is commemorated among the saints of Novgorod. His feast is kept on January 26 (the day of his name, shared with the ancient Xenophon of Constantinople) and his repose on June 28.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Austell of Cornwall (6th C)
• St. Crummine, bishop of Lackan (5th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings