Greatmartyr Euphemia the All-Praised

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Greatmartyr Euphemia the All-Praised

  Euphemia the All-praised (†304) is the great-martyr of Chalcedon, a senator's daughter who suffered under the proconsul Priscus in the last great persecution and died in the arena, wounded by a she-bear after fire, wheel and water had left her unharmed. Her fame rests above all on the miracle of 451: the Fourth Ecumenical Council met in her basilica at Chalcedon, and when the orthodox and the Monophysite definitions of faith were laid in her coffin, she was found holding the orthodox tome — whence she is honoured as the seal and patroness of the Council of Chalcedon. Her relics rest today in the patriarchal church of Saint George at the Phanar in Constantinople. She is commemorated on September 16 (martyrdom) and July 11 (the miracle of 451).

• Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian of Carthage (258)

• St Ninian, Enlightener of Scotland (432)

• Our Holy Father Dorotheos the Solitary of Egypt (4th c.)

• David of Thessalonica

  David the Dendrite is the most beloved of the ascetics of Thessalonica and one of the best documented of the tree-dwelling hermits of the Christian East. A Mesopotamian by birth who came west as a young monk to the monastery of the holy martyrs Theodore and Mercurius outside the city walls, he refused to be made abbot and instead climbed into an almond tree beside the church, where he lived exposed to sun, frost and rain for three years until an angel bade him come down. From the cell he then occupied he healed, exorcised, counselled and prophesied for decades. In extreme old age he was sent as the city's ambassador to the emperor Justinian at Constantinople to plead that Thessalonica not be stripped of the prefecture of Illyricum; there he carried live coals and incense in his bare hands before the emperor and the senate without being burned, and won his city's cause. He died on the voyage home, about 540, within sight of the Thessalonian shore, having accomplished exactly the "one last work of love" the angel had foretold.

• Dorotheus the Hermit of Egypt

  Dorotheus (4th century), called the Theban from his birthplace in the Thebaid, was an Egyptian hermit who pursued for some sixty years one of the most unbending ascetic regimes recorded of the desert fathers. In the midday heat he gathered stones by the sea to build cells for other hermits; by night he wove ropes and baskets of palm for his bread; he ate almost nothing, never lay down to sleep, and answered those who asked why he so wore out his body: "It kills me; I kill it." His young disciple Palladius, later bishop of Helenopolis, preserved his memory in the Lausiac History. He reposed in peace at a great age and is commemorated on September 16.

• Ludmila of Bohemia

  Ludmila (c. 860–921) was the first Christian princess of Bohemia, wife of Bořivoj I, and the grandmother and first teacher of Wenceslaus (Václav), the Czech prince and passion-bearer. Baptized with her husband by Methodius, Archbishop of Moravia and Enlightener of the Slavs, she spent her long widowhood building up the infant Czech Church, and raised her grandson in the faith. In the regency struggle that followed her son's death, her pagan- leaning daughter-in-law Drahomíra had her strangled at her retreat of Tetín on the night of September 15–16, 921. The first martyr of the Czech lands and patroness of Bohemia, she is venerated across the Orthodox world, especially in the Czech and Russian churches, on September 16.

• Melitina of Marcianopolis

  Melitina was a martyr of Marcianopolis in Lower Moesia (near modern Devnya, Bulgaria) who suffered in the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161) — one of the comparatively few martyrs transmitted from that mild emperor's time. A bold confessor whose preaching drew pagans to Christ, she is said to have shattered the idols of Apollo and Herakles by her prayer and to have converted the wife of her persecutor, the governor Antiochus, before both women were beheaded. A Macedonian Christian named Akakios obtained her body and died at sea carrying it home; both were buried on the island of Lemnos. She is commemorated on September 16.

• Sebastiana of Heraclea

  Sebastiana is venerated as a disciple of the Apostle Paul who won the martyr's crown in old age under the emperor Domitian (81–96). Tried first at Marcianopolis in Moesia, where she emerged unharmed from a burning furnace, she was sent to Heraclea in Thrace, tortured again, given to the beasts — which would not touch her — and finally beheaded. Her body, cast into the sea, was carried by the tradition's account to an island shore and honourably buried. As one of the last living links to the apostolic generation, she is commemorated on September 16.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Ninian, bishop of Whithorn (Candida Casa) (c.432)
• St. Edith of Wilton (984)
• Enshrinement of the Relics (1984) (3rd Sep O.C.) of St. Edward the Martyr, King of England (978)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings