Martyrs Eulampius and Eulampia at Nicomedia

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Martyrs Eulampius and Eulampia at Nicomedia

  Eulampius and Eulampia (†c. 303–311) were a brother and sister of Nicomedia, the chief martyrs of October 10. A young man seized after reading aloud the imperial edict against the Christians posted in the city, Eulampius confessed Christ under torture and by his prayer cast down the idol in the temple of Mars; his sister Eulampia, seeing his sufferings, declared herself a Christian of her own accord and suffered beside him. Preserved unharmed in a cauldron of boiling matter and in the flames, they won some two hundred onlookers to Christ, who were beheaded with them; Eulampius died by the sword, and Eulampia, by the witness of the Greek verses, gave up her soul from her torments before the blade could fall.

• Blessed Fool for Christ Andrew of Totma (1637)

• Ambrose of Optina

  Ambrose of Optina (1812–1891) is the most celebrated of the elders of the Optina hermitage and one of the best-loved saints of nineteenth-century Russia. A Tambov priest's-family son who entered Optina in 1839 after a sickbed vow, he was formed by the elders Leonid and Macarius, and from 1860 until his death was the spiritual father to whom all Russia came — peasants, merchants, bishops, and writers, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy among them. Bedridden for much of his life, he received the stream of visitors daily for three decades, answered thousands of letters, helped prepare Optina's famous patristic translations, and founded the Shamordino convent for women whom no other monastery would take. He reposed at Shamordino on October 10, 1891, and was glorified in 1988, the first of the Optina elders to be canonised.

• Bassian of Constantinople

  Bassian of Constantinople (fifth century) was a Syrian-born ascetic who settled in the imperial capital in the days of the emperor Marcian (450–457) and founded there the monastery that long bore his name, governing as igumen a community the tradition numbers at three hundred monks. His house is remembered above all as the refuge of Matrona of Perge, who lived there disguised as the eunuch-monk Babylas until her sanctity was discovered. Famed for his virtues and miracles, Bassian reached old age and reposed in peace; the Greek, Slavic, and OCA calendars keep his memory on October 10.

• Stephen of the Kiev Caves

  Stephen was a disciple of Theodosius of the Kiev Caves, whom the dying founder named as his own successor at the request of the brotherhood, and who as abbot completed the great church of the Dormition at the Caves monastery and reorganised its life around the new church. Deposed in 1078 by a faction within the community, he answered the injury by praying for those who had driven him out, and founded a new monastery on the Klov stream near Kiev, dedicating its church to the Placing of the Robe of the Theotokos at Blachernae in thanksgiving for the Mother of God's protection of the Caves. About 1091 he was made bishop of Vladimir in Volhynia, took part that same year in the translation of the relics of Theodosius, and for three years governed his see with a reputation for meekness and mercy before his repose on 27 April 1094. He is commemorated on April 27 and among the Saints of Volhynia on October 10.

• Theotecnus of Antioch

  Theotecnus of Antioch (†c. 305–311) was a soldier-martyr of the last great persecution: a renowned military commander at Antioch who refused the emperor Maximian's command to sacrifice to the gods. Mocked by being dressed in women's clothing and set among the slave women, he held his confession; tortured, and cast into a cauldron of boiling pitch which was cooled at his entry, he was imprisoned, helped a fellow confessor named Alexander to escape, and was finally drowned in the sea with a stone about his neck. His relics were later recovered on the Cilician coast and given Christian burial. The Slavic calendars and the OCA keep his memory on October 10.

• Twenty-six Martyrs of Zographou

  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.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Paulinus, archbishop of York (644)
• St. Patrician, bishop of Man (5th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings