Martyr Longinus the Centurion

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Martyr Longinus the Centurion

  Longinus the Centurion (1st century) is, in the tradition of the Church, the Roman officer who commanded the execution detail on Golgotha and confessed at the death of Christ, "Truly this was the Son of God" (Matthew 27:54). The tradition further knows him as the soldier who pierced the Lord's side with a spear, and as head of the watch at the Tomb who refused the Sanhedrin's silver rather than deny the Resurrection. Returning to his native Cappadocia, he preached Christ and was beheaded through Pilate's machinations; the finding of his head by a blind widow, who received her sight at its touch, made him the saint invoked above all for afflictions of the eyes. His feast is October 16.

• Our Venerable Father Gall, Enlightener of Switzerland (640)

• John and Longinus of Yarenga

  Two men of the White Sea coast — John and Longinus — of whom nothing whatever is transmitted except how they died and what happened afterwards. Both were drowned at sea, at different times, near the village of Yarenga on the Summer Coast of the White Sea, in the middle of the sixteenth century; both bodies were washed ashore and buried by the local people where they were found; and both, from their graves, began to appear to the living, to name themselves, and to heal — above all the possessed, and sailors caught in the storms of that sea. Their relics were gathered at the church of St Nicholas at Yarenga and, on 3 July 1638, translated in procession to a new church of Zosimas and Sabbatius built for them, in a ceremony described in detail by an eyewitness. They are among the very few saints of the Russian calendar whose entire hagiography is posthumous.

• Leontius, Dometius, Terentius and Domninus

  Leontius, Dometius, Terentius and Domninus are four martyrs commemorated together in the Greek synaxarion of October 16, in the company of the day's chief saint, Longinus the Centurion. Their whole surviving record is the synaxarion notice and its verses, which are addressed to Leontius as the leader of the band and play on his name: with his three fellow-contestants he went lion-like into the midst of the fire. Where and when the four suffered is not transmitted; the Church knows them by their names, their unity, and their death by burning.

• Malus the Hermit

  Malus (or Malos) is a venerable hermit known to the Church from a single line of the Greek synaxarion for October 16, where his memory is kept after that of Longinus the Centurion. Nothing of his time, his country, or his labours is transmitted — only his name, his rank among the venerable monastics, and the couplet the synaxarist gave him: leaving the brief sojourn of earth, he now inhabits the long dwelling-place of heaven. His commemoration survives in the Greek synaxarion tradition; the Slavic calendars of the day do not carry him.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Lull of Malmesbury, missionary in Germany (787)
• Holy martry Eliphius (Eloff) (362)
• St. Vitalis (Vial), Hermit, Confessor (740)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings