Apostles of the 70 Erastus, Olympas, Herodion, Sosipater, Quartus, Tertius

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Apostles of the 70 Erastus, Olympas, Herodion, Sosipater, Quartus, Tertius

  These six apostles of the Seventy are all named by the Apostle Paul in the sixteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and the Byzantine calendar gathers them into a single commemoration on November 10. Olympas and Rodion (Herodion), companions of the Apostle Peter, were beheaded at Rome on the very day of Peter's crucifixion; Sosipater was bishop of Iconium and Erastus a steward of the Church and later bishop of Paneas; Quartus, bishop of Beirut, converted many pagans and reposed in peace; and Tertius, the scribe to whom Paul dictated the Epistle to the Romans, became the second bishop of Iconium and died a martyr. All lived in the first century, and all are commemorated again with the whole company at the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles on January 4.

• Our Venerable Father Arsenios of Cappadocia, the Wonderworker (1924)

• George the Great Martyr

  George the Trophy-bearer (†303) is the most universally venerated of the martyrs of the East, honoured from Ethiopia to England as Μεγαλομάρτυς and Τροπαιοφόρος — "great-martyr" and "trophy-bearer," the soldier who carried off the prize. Born in Cappadocia of a martyred father and a Palestinian mother from Lydda, he rose young to the rank of comes in the guard of Diocletian, and when the persecuting edict was published at Nicomedia in 303 he gave away his goods, freed his slaves, and denounced the emperor's decree to his face before the council. There followed the long cycle of tortures for which his passion is famous — the spiked wheel, the pit of quicklime, the red-hot iron shoes, the poison of the magician Athanasius — through which the martyr was preserved, so that the sorcerer himself, and the Empress Alexandra, and many of the court confessed Christ. He was beheaded on 23 April 303 and buried at Lydda (Diospolis) in Palestine, where his shrine became one of the great pilgrimage places of Christendom. To him the later tradition attached the celebrated miracle of the dragon, and he is the patron of Georgia, England, Greece, Ethiopia, Portugal and Catalonia, of the city of Beirut and of Christian soldiers everywhere.

• Milos of Persia

  Milos (†c. 341) was a Persian nobleman and soldier who became bishop of Susa (the Shushan of the Prophet Daniel), a hierarch graced with the gifts of prophecy and healing whom the Church styles the Wonderworker. Driven from his see by its pagan people, he journeyed to Jerusalem and to Alexandria, where he met Anthony the Great, before returning to Persia. There, in the great persecution of the Christians under Shapur II, he was arrested with his disciples and put to the sword, while his two disciples — a presbyter and a deacon — were killed with clubs and stones, around the year 341. He is commemorated on November 10.

• Orestes of Cappadocia

  Orestes (†c. 304) was a physician and soldier of Tyana in Cappadocia who suffered martyrdom for Christ in the persecution of Diocletian. Brought before the imperial officer Maximinus, sent to root out the faith from Cappadocia, he refused every inducement to sacrifice to the idols; at his prayer the pagan temple and its images collapsed. After long tortures he was pierced with nails, bound to a wild horse, and dragged to his death over the stones, and his relics were cast into the sea. His memory is kept on November 10, and the Greek Menaion gives him the day's proper service. He is not to be confused with the Orestes numbered among the Five Martyrs of Sebaste (December 13).

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Justus, 4th archbishop of Canterbury (627)
• St. Aedh MacBrice, bishop of Killare (588)
• St. Eleath the Poet (6th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings