Hieromartyr Clement and Martyr Agathangel

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Hieromartyr Clement and Martyr Agathangel

  Agathangelus (†c. 312) was the young companion and fellow-martyr of Clement of Ancyra. A native of Rome, he was moved by the constancy of the imprisoned bishop of Ancyra — some accounts make him one of a company of Roman confessors, spared when his companions were put to the sword — and attached himself to Clement to share his chains and his death. From that point the two are inseparable in the tradition: taken, tortured, and at last beheaded together at Ancyra, on the day the Church keeps them both, January 23. His name, "good messenger" (agath-angelos), is dwelt on by the hymnographers, who set the youthful disciple beside the aged hierarch as his "fellow-contestant."

• Antiochian commemoration

  

  Clement of Ancyra

  Clement of Ancyra (c. 258 – c. 312) was bishop of Ancyra in Galatia and one of the most enduring of all the martyrs of the synaxarion: the tradition holds that his passion lasted some twenty-eight years, dragged through a succession of emperors, governors, and cities from the persecution of Diocletian to its very last flickerings under Maximinus. Orphaned young and raised by a Christian woman named Sophia, he was made bishop of his city at twenty; when the persecution broke out he was seized and sent from tribunal to tribunal — Ancyra, Rome, Nicomedia, Amisus, Tarsus — enduring torture after torture without yielding, and by his constancy converting many, including his fellow-martyr Agathangelus, a young Roman who joined himself to the bishop to suffer with him. After nearly three decades of chains and torments the two were at last beheaded at Ancyra, on a day the Church keeps as January 23. For the length and severity of his contest the Greek Church calls him polyathlos, "of many struggles."

• Dionysius of Olympus

  Dionysius of Olympus (c. 1490s – 1541) was a Greek ascetic and monastic founder of the Ottoman period, remembered as a light of the enslaved Greek Church. Born in Thessaly and formed as a monk at Meteora, he made his way to Mount Athos, where he lived as a hesychast and was chosen abbot of the Monastery of Philotheou; driven from the Holy Mountain by the jealousy his reforms aroused, he settled at last on the northern slopes of Mount Olympus, in the gorge of the Enipeas, where he raised the Monastery of the Holy Trinity and gathered a brotherhood devoted to silence, manual labour, and the care and teaching of the poor mountain people. A tireless spiritual father, preacher, and worker of wonders among a subjugated flock, he reposed on Olympus on January 23, 1541.

• Gennadius of Kostroma

  Gennadius of Kostroma and Liubimograd (early sixteenth century – 1565) was a Russian monastic founder, a disciple of Cornelius of Komel and, through him, an heir of the great northern tradition of forest-dwelling ascetics. Born at Mogilev in a wealthy family under the name Gregory, he abandoned home and riches as a youth, was tonsured by Cornelius in the Vologda forest, and after sharing his master's flight into the deeper wilderness founded, on the shore of Lake Sura in the Kostroma country, the Monastery of the Transfiguration (afterwards called the Gennadiev Monastery). Famed for his labours, his charity, and a gift of spiritual counsel and foresight, he reposed on January 23, 1565, and was glorified when his relics were uncovered incorrupt in 1646.

• Mausimas the Syrian

  Mausimas the Syrian (late fourth century) was a village priest and ascetic of the country near Cyrrhus in Syria, remembered in the History of the Monks of Syria of Theodoret of Cyrrhus. A Syriac-speaking man of the simplest life, he gave himself wholly to hospitality and the relief of the poor, keeping his door open to every stranger; and the tradition preserves the memory of two vessels in his house — one of grain and one of oil — that, like the widow's cruse of Zarephath, never ran dry so long as he gave from them to the needy. He is commemorated on January 23.

• Paulinus of Nola

  Paulinus of Nola (c. 354 – 431) was a Gallo-Roman nobleman — senator, consul, and governor — who renounced one of the greatest fortunes in the Western Empire to become a monk, a Christian poet, and at last bishop of Nola in Campania, where he served for decades at the shrine of the martyr Felix. With his wife Therasia he gave away his estates to the poor and to the ransoming of captives; a cherished tradition, told by Gregory the Great, has him at the end of his resources offering his own person into slavery in Africa to redeem a widow's only son — the deed that earned him the title "the Merciful." A friend and correspondent of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Martin of Tours, and one of the finest Latin Christian poets, he reposed at Nola in 431. The West keeps him on June 22; the Byzantine calendar commemorates him on January 23.

• Salaman the Silent

  Salaman the Silent (died c. 400) was a hermit of the Euphrates country in Syria, one of the ascetics whose lives Theodoret of Cyrrhus recorded, and the very type of the hesychast — the monk of total silence. Born at the village of Capersana on the western bank of the river, he shut himself into a small windowless and doorless cell, walled up from all company, and there passed his years without speaking to any man, opening his wall but once a year to take in a year's supply of food. So complete was his stillness that when the bishop of the region broke in and ordained him by force, and again when the villagers of the two banks carried off his very cell from one side of the Euphrates to the other, Salaman answered nothing at all, neither resisting nor consenting, but kept his silence to the end. He is commemorated on January 23.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Colman of Lismore (c.702)
• Holy Martyr Maimbod (c.880)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings