Hieromartyr Athenogenes, Bishop of Heracleopolis

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Hieromartyr Athenogenes, Bishop of Heracleopolis

  Athenogenes was a bishop — in the older and more precise notices a chorepiskopos, a country-bishop — of Pedachthoe, a small place in Armenia Minor within the territory of Sebastea, who was burned alive with ten of his disciples in the Great Persecution, about the years 303–311. He is one of the very few martyrs of the fixed calendar whose passion may rest on the wording of an actual court record, and he is remembered for two things besides his death: the hymn he is said to have left his companions as he went to the fire — which a long tradition, following Nikodemos the Hagiorite, identifies with the evening hymn Phos Hilaron, "O Gladsome Light" — and the deer of Pedachthoe, which by the account of his synaxarion came down each year with her fawn to his shrine on the day of his memory. His witness is anchored in a single sentence of Basil the Great, who appeals to "the hymn of Athenogenes" as evidence of what the martyrs believed about the Holy Spirit.

• Antiochus the Physician of Sebaste

  Antiochus was a physician of Sebaste in Cappadocia and, by the tradition of the synaxaria, the brother of the Martyr Plato of Ancyra, from whom he learned the faith. He practised his art without fee, treating the sick of the cities of Cappadocia and Galatia and preaching the Gospel as he went, until he was arrested in the persecution of Diocletian by the governor Adrianos and refused to sacrifice. Cast into a cauldron of boiling water he was unhurt; wild beasts loosed on him lay down at his feet; and at his prayer, the account says, the idols of the place fell to dust. He was at last beheaded — and with him Cyriacus, one of the executioners, who confessed Christ at the sight and received the sword beside the man he had been sent to kill. The two were buried together. His memory is July 16.

• Ennatha, Valentina and Paula

  Ennatha, Valentina and Paula were three Christian virgins of Palestine martyred at Caesarea in the year 308, during the Great Persecution under Maximin, when the cruel governor Firmilian was putting the Christians of the province to death. Their passion is recorded by the eyewitness Eusebius of Caesarea in his Martyrs of Palestine. Ennatha (or Enniatha), a virgin of Gaza, was scourged and cruelly tormented for confessing Christ; Valentina, a virgin of Caesarea, brought to the altar to sacrifice, kicked it over and overthrew the fire upon it, and for this was tortured savagely; and the two were then burned together in one fire. Paula, a third, was beheaded. They are commemorated on February 10.

• Faustus the Martyr

  Faustus is a martyr of the persecution of Decius (249–251) of whom the synaxarion transmits almost nothing except the manner of his death, which is unforgettable: arrested for his Christian activity and refusing to renounce Christ, he was cruelly tortured and then nailed to a cross, and lived upon it for five days, at the end of which — blessing and giving thanks to God — he gave up his spirit. The Greek synaxaristis states plainly that his country and family are unknown. He is commemorated on July 16.

• Julia of Carthage

  Julia was a Christian girl of a good family of Carthage who lost everything in the sack of her city by barbarians, was sold into slavery, and served a pagan merchant with such patience, chastity and steadiness in prayer and fasting that her master came to prefer her to all his household — and yet could not move her an inch towards his gods. Carried with him on a trading voyage from Syria towards Gaul, she was put ashore, or taken from the ship, at Corsica, where the people were keeping a pagan festival; when she refused to join it and confessed herself a Christian she was tortured and crucified. Monks from a neighbouring island recovered her body; her relics were translated in the eighth century to Brescia in Lombardy, where the great monastery of Santa Giulia bears her name. She is one of the very few Western martyrs kept on the Byzantine fixed calendar, and one of the still fewer women whom the tradition records as dying on a cross. Corsica honours her as its patroness. She is commemorated on July 16 in the East and on May 22 in the West.

• Martyrs of Pisidia

  A great company of martyrs beheaded in Pisidia, in the highlands of southern Asia Minor, whose number the manuscripts give as one thousand and fifteen and, in another reading, as fifteen thousand. Beyond the place, the manner of their death and the number, the synaxarion transmits nothing whatever: no names, no emperor, no magistrate, no year. They are commemorated on July 16.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Helier, missionary and Protomartyr of Jersey (560)
• St. Sinach MacDara (6th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings