Unmercenaries Cyrus and John

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Unmercenaries Cyrus and John

  Athanasia and her three daughters — Theoctiste, Theodota and Eudoxia — were a Christian mother and her children martyred at Canopus near Alexandria about the year 311, in the last of the pagan persecutions, together with the holy unmercenaries Cyrus and John. Arrested for the faith, they were the very reason the two unmercenaries came forward: Cyrus and John, fearing that the youth of the girls — aged, the tradition says, fifteen, thirteen and eleven — and their mother's tenderness might be worked upon to draw them into apostasy, visited them in prison to strengthen them for their confession. The whole company was condemned together; the three daughters were beheaded before their mother's eyes, then Athanasia, and last the two unmercenaries. They are commemorated on January 31 with Cyrus and John.

• Saint of the day

  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.

• Venerable Nicetas, hermit of the Kiev Caves and Bishop of Novgorod (1108)

  Nikitas of Novgorod (†1108) was a monk of the Kiev Caves who became one of the most instructive figures in the Russian ascetic tradition: a young hermit who, shutting himself into reclusion against his abbot's warning and before he was ready, fell into spiritual delusion (prelest) — visited by a demon in the guise of an angel, given a false gift of prophecy, and turned wholly to the Old Testament while unable so much as to bear the name of Christ or the Gospels. The elders of the Caves, discerning the deception, drove out the demon by their prayers, and Nikitas was restored — humbled, unlettered again, and set on the sure path of obedience. He rose to sanctity, was made Bishop of Novgorod about 1096, and governed that see for some thirteen years, remembered for the two miracles by which he saved his city: he brought rain in a drought and quenched a great fire by his prayer. He reposed in 1108; his incorrupt relics were uncovered in 1558.

• Marcella of Rome (410)

  Marcella of Rome (c. 325 – 410) was a noble Roman widow who turned her palace on the Aventine into one of the first houses of ascetic and monastic life for women in the Latin West. Widowed after only a few months of marriage, she refused a second and illustrious match and gave the rest of her long life to prayer, fasting, charity, and the study of Scripture, gathering about her a circle of Roman matrons and virgins. When Saint Jerome came to Rome she became his pupil and searching questioner in the Scriptures, and after his departure she was reckoned an authority to whom the Roman clergy themselves referred hard questions. In the sack of Rome by Alaric's Goths in 410 she was beaten by the plunderers to make her yield treasure she had long since given to the poor, and, having secured the safety of her companion, died soon after of the ill-usage. She is commemorated on January 31.

• Arsenios of Paros

  Arsenios of Paros (1800–1877) was one of the great spiritual fathers and wonderworkers of nineteenth-century Greece. Born at Ioannina in Epirus and orphaned young, he was tonsured on Mount Athos under the elder Daniel, laboured as a teacher and confessor in the newly independent Greek kingdom, and from 1840 until his death dwelt on the Cycladic island of Paros, where he served as abbot of the monastery of Saint George at Longovarda and spiritual guide of the convent of the Transfiguration. Renowned for his ascetic severity, his gift of discernment, and the miracles and healings worked through his prayers, he became in his lifetime the counsellor of a whole region. He reposed on January 31, 1877, and was glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1967.

• Athanasius of Modon

  Athanasius of Modon (9th century, †c. 885) was a hierarch of the Byzantine Peloponnese, remembered as a bishop of holy life and a worker of wonders. Born at Catania in Sicily and driven from his homeland by the Saracen conquest of the island, he took refuge in Greece, embraced the monastic life, and was raised to the see of Modon (ancient Methone, modern Methoni) in the south-western Peloponnese. He governed his church in piety and reposed in peace about the year 885. He is commemorated on January 31.

• Elias Ardounis

  Elias Ardounis (†1686) was a new-martyr of the Ottoman period from Kalamata in the Peloponnese. A barber by trade and a man respected by Turk and Christian alike, he was drawn — half in jest, in a heated exchange over the taxation of Christians — into a public profession of Islam, and, taken at his word, found himself an apostate. Stricken with remorse, he fled to Mount Athos, was tonsured a monk, and after eight years of penitent tears resolved to wash out his denial with his blood. Returning to Kalamata, he confessed Christ openly before the very men before whom he had denied him; and after beatings, imprisonment and torture he was burned alive just outside the town on January 31, 1686. He is venerated among the neomartyrs under the Turkish yoke.

• Tryphaena of Cyzicus

  Tryphaena of Cyzicus was a Christian martyr of Cyzicus on the Hellespont, a noblewoman who, moved by zeal to strengthen the wavering faithful during a persecution, came forward of her own accord to confess Christ boldly before the pagan authorities and to reproach the worship of idols. For this she was subjected to a succession of savage torments and at last given to the wild beasts, dying when a maddened bull gored her. She is venerated in the Greek tradition as the patroness of her city and is invoked by nursing mothers; her feast is January 31.

• Victorinus and his Companions

  Victorinus, Victor, Nicephorus, Claudius, Diodorus, Serapion and Papias were seven Christians who suffered together at Corinth about the year 251, in the persecution of the emperor Decius. Brought before the governor and refusing to sacrifice, they were put to death by a variety of savage torments: Victorinus, Victor and Nicephorus were crushed in a great stone mortar; Claudius had his hands and feet struck off; Diodorus was cast into the fire; Serapion was beheaded; and Papias was drowned in the sea. They are commemorated on January 31.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Aidan (Maedoc), bishop of Ferns (626)
• St. Melangell, virgin-recluse of Montgomeryshire (6th C)
• St. Adamnan of Coldingham, monk (680)
• St. Wilgils, Hermit of the Humber (7th C)
• Holy Martyr Eusebius the Scot (884)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings