Hieromartyr Phocas, Bishop of Sinope

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Hieromartyr Phocas, Bishop of Sinope

  Phocas was bishop of Sinope, the great harbour city of the southern Black Sea coast, and died a martyr there in the year 117, in the persecution at the end of Trajan's reign: refusing to renounce Christ, he was tortured and shut into a bath-house heated to fury, where he gave up his spirit. Styled "the Wonderworker" in the synaxaria, he became one of the most beloved saints of the Black Sea world — the patron of seafarers, invoked daily by those in peril on the waters, and a defender against fire and drowning. His relics were translated to Constantinople in 404, and his feast is kept on September 22.

• Venerable Cosmas, desert-dweller of Zographou, Mt Athos (1323)

  The Twenty-six Martyrs of Zographou — twenty-two monks of the Bulgarian monastery of Zographou on Mount Athos, led by their abbot Thomas, together with four laymen — were burned alive in the monastery's tower in 1276, in the persecution that followed the Union of Lyons. Refusing the command of the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos and the unionist patriarch John Bekkos to accept the union with Rome, they shut themselves in the tower, denounced the Latinizers from its height as lawless men and heretics, and were given to the flames. They are commemorated on September 22, and at Zographou and in the Bulgarian Church on October 10, the anniversary of the burning.

• Isaac and Martin

  Isaac and Martin were martyrs known only from the brief notice of the Greek synaxarion for September 22, which transmits their names and their martyrdom and nothing more: neither place, nor year, nor persecutor. The verses appointed over them witness that Martin died by the sword: "With Christ breathing courage into him from on high, Martin hastened to breathe out his life against the blade." Their memory is kept on September 22, the day of the hieromartyr Phocas.

• Peter the Tax-Collector

  Peter the Tax-Collector was the chief collector of taxes of the province of Africa under the emperor Justinian (527–565), a hard and merciless man whom God converted through a morsel of bread: a loaf flung in irritation at a beggar was shown him in a vision as the one deed weighed in his favour at the judgement. He gave away his wealth, saw Christ in a dream wearing the garment he had given a poor man, had himself sold into slavery for the poor's sake, and served humbly for years until he was recognised — when he fled, healing a deaf-mute doorkeeper by his word as he went, and remained hidden until his death. The Slavic calendars and the OCA commemorate him on September 22; the Greek books keep January 20.

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