Royal Hours of Theophany; Forefeast of Theophany

Saints commemorated

• Synaxis of Seventy Apostles

  Ananias of Damascus, numbered among the Seventy Apostles, is the disciple to whom the Lord appeared in a vision after the conversion of Saul on the Damascus road, sending him to the street called Straight to lay hands on the persecutor and baptise him (Acts 9): it was through Ananias that Saul received his sight and became Paul. The tradition makes him the first bishop of Damascus — the city that is today the seat of the Patriarchate of Antioch — and a hieromartyr: having preached in Damascus and at Eleutheropolis in Palestine, he was tortured under the governor Lucian and stoned outside the city. He is commemorated on October 1.

• The Ethiopian Eunuch of Queen Candace

• Venerable Apollinaria (5th c.)

• Apelles, Lucius and Clement of the Seventy

  Apelles, Lucius and Clement (1st century) are three of the Seventy Apostles, commemorated together on September 10. All three are greeted by name in the letters of Paul: Apelles, "approved in Christ" (Romans 16:10), became bishop of Heraclea; Lucius (Romans 16:21) — whom the Slavic tradition identifies with the Evangelist Luke, while the Greek synaxaria keep him distinct — became bishop of Laodicea in Syria; and Clement, whose name Paul says is "in the book of life" (Philippians 4:3), became bishop of Sardis. Each finished his course as a preacher of the Gospel; no acts of martyrdom are transmitted. They share the day's synaxis listing with no individual propers, and are commemorated again with all the Seventy on January 4.

• Aristarchus of the Seventy

  Aristarchus of the Seventy was a Macedonian of Thessalonica and one of the most constant companions of the apostle Paul: seized by the Ephesus mob in the riot of the silversmiths, he accompanied Paul through Greece and to Jerusalem, sailed with him on the prisoner's voyage to Rome, and is greeted in the epistles as Paul's "fellow prisoner" and "fellow worker." The Byzantine tradition numbers him among the Seventy and makes him bishop of Apamea in Syria; the tradition of his April feast holds that he was beheaded at Rome under Nero, at the time of Paul's own martyrdom. He is commemorated on September 27 with the apostles Mark and Zenas, on April 15 with Pudens and Trophimus, and with all the Seventy on January 4.

• Aristobulus of Britain

  Aristobulus (1st century) was one of the Seventy Apostles and, by the tradition of the East, the brother — or kinsman — of the Apostle Barnabas of Cyprus. Paul greets "those of the household of Aristobulus" (Romans 16:10), and the Church numbers him among the fellow-labourers of the Apostle, ordained bishop and sent to preach the Gospel in the far West. He is honoured as the first apostle of Britain, carrying Christ to the islands at the edge of the world, where — among a fierce and unbelieving people who beat and mocked him — he founded the Church, made many converts, and, in the received Eastern account, reposed in peace among those he had won. He is commemorated in his own right on March 15 (Greek usage; the Slavic and American calendars keep him on March 16), and again with a company of his fellow apostles of the Seventy on October 31, and among them all in the Synaxis of the Seventy on January 4.

• Barnabas the Apostle

  Barnabas — born Joseph, a Levite of Cyprus, whom the apostles surnamed Barnabas, "son of consolation" — is the one apostle of the Seventy whose life the Acts of the Apostles tells at length. He sold his land and laid the price at the apostles' feet; he vouched for Paul at Jerusalem when the disciples still feared him; he was sent from Jerusalem to Antioch, fetched Saul from Tarsus to help him there, and taught with him for a year in the city where the disciples were first called Christians. The Holy Spirit set the two of them apart for the first missionary journey, through Barnabas's own island and the highlands of Asia Minor; they stood together at the Council of Jerusalem for the freedom of the Gentiles; and then they parted over Mark, Barnabas's kinsman, whom Paul would not take again. Barnabas sailed with Mark to Cyprus, and there, at Salamis, he was killed about the year 61. Mark buried him with the Gospel of Matthew in Barnabas's own hand upon his breast — and when the tomb was found in 478 that Gospel won the Church of Cyprus its autocephaly, which it holds to this day.

• Carpus and Alphaeus of the Seventy

  On May 26 the Church keeps the joint memory of two of the Seventy Apostles: Carpus, the host at whose house in Troas the Apostle Paul left the cloak and the books he asks Timothy to bring to him (2 Tim. 4:13), afterwards a preacher in Crete and first bishop of Beroea; and Alphaeus, of Capernaum in Galilee, whom the tradition names as the father of the Apostles James and Matthew, and whose own children Abercius and Helen are commemorated with him on this day as martyrs. Both belong to that second and wider apostolic company whom the Lord "appointed and sent two and two before his face" (Luke 10:1), and both are counted in the ancient rolls of the Seventy; of the events of their lives the record is slender, and the honour paid them rests on the New Testament's brief notices and on the memory of the churches they founded.

• Dionysius the Areopagite

  Dionysius the Areopagite (†c. 96) was the judge of the Athenian high court who believed at the Apostle Paul's sermon on the Areopagus (Acts 17:34) and became, by the earliest tradition, the first bishop of Athens. The Church commemorates him on October 3 as a hieromartyr, together with the presbyter Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius who suffered with him. Around his name has gathered one of the great questions of Christian history: the Corpus Areopagiticum, the profound mystical-theological writings transmitted under his name but composed some four centuries after him, and the medieval conflation of the Areopagite with Denis, the martyred third-century bishop of Paris.

• Evodus of Antioch

  Evodus (†c. 66) was one of the Seventy Apostles and the first bishop of Antioch after the Apostle Peter, the predecessor of Ignatius the God-bearer in the see from which the Patriarchate of Antioch descends. Eusebius names him first in the Antiochian succession, and a later tradition credits him with coining the name "Christians," first given to the disciples at Antioch. He is said to have shepherded the Antiochian church for some twenty-seven years and to have died a martyr, under Nero by the most common account. His writings, among them a book called The Star, are lost. He is commemorated on September 7 with the Apostle Onesiphorus, and with all the Seventy on January 4.

• Hermas, Patrobus, Linus, Gaius and Philologus of the Seventy

  Hermas, Patrobus, Linus, Gaius and Philologus were five apostles of the Seventy whom the Byzantine calendar commemorates together on November 5. Each is named in the closing greetings of Paul's Epistle to the Romans or in the Second Epistle to Timothy, and each is remembered as a bishop of the apostolic age: Hermas at Philippopolis in Thrace, where he died a martyr; Patrobus at Puteoli and Naples in Italy; Linus at Rome, the successor of the Apostle Peter and the Linus of the Roman episcopal succession named in Second Timothy; Gaius at Ephesus, after Timothy; and Philologus at Sinope on the Black Sea, consecrated by the Apostle Andrew. The Church keeps their joint memory among the Seventy sent out by the Lord.

• Hermes of the Seventy

  Hermes was one of the Seventy Apostles whom the Lord sent out before his face (Luke 10:1), named by the Apostle Paul in the closing greetings of the Epistle to the Romans — "Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brethren which are with them" (Romans 16:14). The tradition remembers him as a bishop of Dalmatia, a labourer of the apostolic generation who carried the Gospel to the Adriatic coast. The Church keeps his memory on March 8, and again on April 8 among a company of the Seventy, and gathers him with the whole company at the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles on January 4. Because Romans 16:14 names in one breath both a Hermes and a Hermas, he is constantly confused with Hermas of Philippopolis (kept November 5), and with the shadowy Hermas to whom the second-century work The Shepherd is ascribed; the tradition distinguishes all three.

• James the Brother of the Lord

  James the Brother of the Lord (died c. 62) — styled by the Greek Church Adelphotheos, "Brother of God," and by the whole tradition "James the Just" — was the first bishop of Jerusalem and head of the mother church of Christendom for some thirty years. The Orthodox tradition knows him as a son of Joseph the Betrothed by an earlier marriage, and so the Lord's brother in the household of Joseph; Paul calls him simply "the Lord's brother" and counts him among the apostles and the "pillars" of the Church. He presided over the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), gave his name to the most ancient complete eucharistic liturgy still in use, and by his ascetic holiness and ceaseless prayer for his people earned the surname "the Just." According to Hegesippus he was cast down from the pinnacle of the Temple and clubbed to death; according to Josephus he was stoned by order of the high priest Ananus. His feast is October 23. He is distinct from James the son of Zebedee (April 30) and James the son of Alphaeus (October 9).

• Jason and Sosipater

  Jason and Sosipater are two apostles of the Seventy, disciples and kinsmen of the Apostle Paul, whom the Church honours together as the enlighteners of Corfu (Kerkyra). Both are greeted by name in the New Testament — Jason as Paul's host at Thessalonica whose house was stormed by the mob (Acts 17:5–9), and both as those who send greeting from Corinth, "Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen" (Romans 16:21). The tradition makes Jason a native of Tarsus, its first-fruits and its bishop, and Sosipater a man of Achaia and bishop of Iconium. Leaving their sees, the two sailed west to the island of Corfu, built there the first church in the name of the Protomartyr Stephen, and were imprisoned by the island's ruler; from that prison they converted seven condemned robbers and the gaoler who guarded them, and at last the king's own daughter Kerkyra and the ruler himself, who was baptised Sebastian. They ended their days on the island in great old age, and Corfu keeps them as its apostles to this day.

• John Mark of the Seventy

  The apostle Mark of the Seventy, "also called John" — the John Mark of the Acts of the Apostles — was a Jerusalem Christian of the first generation, in whose mother Mary's house the Church gathered, and an early companion of Barnabas and Paul on their missionary journeys. The Byzantine tradition numbers him among the Seventy and makes him bishop of Byblos in Phoenicia, where such grace attended him that, like Peter's, his very shadow healed the sick. He is commemorated on September 27 with the apostles Aristarchus and Zenas, and with all the Seventy on January 4. The synaxaria distinguish him from Mark the Evangelist and from Mark the cousin of Barnabas, though the three are tangled in both tradition and scholarship.

• Luke the Evangelist

  Luke the Evangelist (first century, reposed in Boeotia at the age of 84 by the most ancient account) is the "beloved physician" of Colossians 4:14, the faithful travelling-companion of the Apostle Paul — "only Luke is with me" (2 Timothy 4:11) — and the author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, the largest single contribution to the New Testament and the Church's first written history. The tradition, from Eusebius onward, makes him a native of Antioch in Syria, numbers him among the Seventy Apostles and as one of the two disciples of the road to Emmaus, and — from the sixth century — remembers him as the first painter of icons of the Theotokos. His relics were translated from Thebes to the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople in 357 and lie today in Padua, from which a rib was returned to his ancient tomb at Thebes in 1998. His feast is October 18.

• Mark of Apollonias

  Mark of Apollonias — the apostle of the Seventy whom the New Testament names as "the cousin of Barnabas" (Colossians 4:10) — is counted by the Byzantine tradition among the Seventy and made bishop of Apollonias. He is commemorated on October 30 together with the apostles Tertius, Justus and Artemas of the Seventy, and with all the Seventy on January 4. He is one of the three apostles named Mark whom the synaxaria carefully distinguish — Mark the Evangelist (April 25), Mark "also called John," bishop of Byblos (September 27), and this Mark, bishop of Apollonias — while much of the source tradition, and modern scholarship, tangles the three together.

• Mark the Evangelist

  Mark the Evangelist — the John Mark of the Acts of the Apostles, son of that Mary of Jerusalem in whose house the first community gathered and kinsman of the apostle Barnabas — is the writer of the Second Gospel and, by the unanimous witness of antiquity, Peter's interpreter, who set down in writing what the chief apostle preached at Rome. Carried from Jerusalem to Antioch by Barnabas and Saul, he served them on the first missionary journey, turned back at Perga and became the occasion of their parting, and was afterwards reconciled — Paul calls him profitable for the ministry, and Peter calls him "my son." The tradition then sends him to Egypt, where he founded the Church of Alexandria and became its first bishop, and where, about the year 68, on the day the city kept the feast of its idol Serapis, he was dragged by a rope through the streets until he died. His relics were carried off to Venice in 828 and a portion of them returned to Alexandria in 1968. He is the evangelist of the lion, and every patriarch of Alexandria to this day is styled the successor of his throne.

• Olympas, Rodion, Sosipater, Erastus, Quartus and Tertius of the Seventy

  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.

• Onesiphorus of the Seventy

  Onesiphorus (1st century) is the disciple whom the Apostle Paul blesses by name in his last letter: "he often refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain, but when he was in Rome he sought me out diligently and found me" (2 Timothy 1:16–17). Counted among the Seventy Apostles, he is held by tradition to have served Paul at Ephesus, to have become bishop of Colophon in Asia Minor and afterwards of Corinth, and to have died a martyr at Parium on the Hellespont, where he had gone to preach Christ. He is commemorated on September 7 with the Apostle Evodus, on December 8 with six fellow apostles of the Seventy, and on January 4 with all the Seventy.

• Parmenas the Deacon

  Parmenas was the last-named but one of the seven deacons whom the Apostles ordained at Jerusalem (Acts 6:1–6), and is numbered among the Seventy Apostles. Beyond that verse the tradition transmits very little: that he preached Christ through Macedonia, and that he died there — in the account followed by the Greek synaxaria, worn out by sickness and labour before the eyes of the Apostles themselves; in the account followed by the Latin martyrologies and by much modern Orthodox usage, as a martyr under the emperor Trajan. He is commemorated on July 28 with his fellow deacons Prochorus, Nicanor and Timon.

• Philip the Deacon

  Philip the Deacon (first century), counted among the Seventy Apostles, was one of the Seven chosen by the apostles to serve tables in Jerusalem (Acts 6). When persecution scattered the Church he became its first great missionary: he evangelised Samaria, where even Simon Magus believed and was baptised, and on the Gaza road he baptised the Ethiopian eunuch — the first Gentile fruit of Africa. Settled at Caesarea, he was called "the evangelist" and had four virgin daughters who prophesied, among them Hermione of Ephesus. The tradition makes him at last bishop of Tralles in Asia Minor, where he reposed in old age. He is not to be confused with Philip the Apostle, of the Twelve (November 14).

• Prochorus the Deacon

  Prochorus was one of the seven deacons ordained by the Apostles in the earliest days of the Jerusalem church (Acts 6:1–6) and is numbered among the Seventy Apostles. The tradition makes him a companion first of the Apostle Peter, who set him over the church of Nicomedia in Bithynia, and afterwards of John the Theologian, whose disciple and amanuensis he became: it is Prochorus whom the whole Byzantine iconographic tradition shows seated at John's feet in the cave of Patmos, taking down at his dictation the words of the Apocalypse. Returning at length to his see, he went out preaching and is held to have finished his course as a martyr at Antioch. He is kept on July 28 with his fellow deacons Nicanor, Timon and Parmenas.

• Quadratus of Athens

  Quadratus (Kodratos), numbered among the Seventy Apostles, preached Christ at Athens and at Magnesia, served as bishop of Athens, and died a martyr's death around 130 — stoned by a pagan mob and left to perish of hunger in prison. He is the author of the earliest surviving Christian apology, a defence of the faith presented to the emperor Hadrian, of which one luminous fragment is preserved by Eusebius: that those whom Christ healed and raised remained alive as witnesses "even to our own times." His feast is kept on September 21, the leavetaking of the Elevation of the Cross.

• Silas, Silvanus, Crescens and Epaenetus

  On July 30 the Church keeps together four apostles of the Seventy whose names stand in the New Testament itself: Silas, the prophet and "chief man among the brethren" whom the Council of Jerusalem sent to Antioch with its decree and who then walked the whole of Paul's second journey with him — beaten at Philippi, singing in the stocks at midnight, and left at last as bishop of Corinth; Silvanus, whom the tradition makes bishop of Thessalonica and a martyr, and whose name Peter writes at the end of his first epistle; Crescens, whom Paul's last letter sends away to Galatia and whom the synaxarion follows into Gaul before his martyrdom under Trajan; and Epaenetus, "the firstfruits unto Christ," greeted in Romans 16 and remembered as first bishop of Carthage. With them on this day the Menaion names Andronicus, bishop of Pannonia, whose own feast is May 17. The four are of the first apostolic generation, and their history is exactly as long as the few verses in which they appear and the short notices the synaxaria have added to them.

• Simeon of Jerusalem

  Simeon, son of Clopas, was the second bishop of Jerusalem and a kinsman of the Lord according to the flesh — by the witness of Hegesippus a cousin of Christ, since Clopas was the brother of Joseph the Betrothed. Chosen to the throne of the mother church after the martyrdom of James the Brother of the Lord, he governed the Christians of Judea through the catastrophe of the Jewish War, the flight of the community across the Jordan to Pella, and the destruction of the Temple in the year 70, and held the see for some forty years — the longest bridge in the record between the apostolic generation and the Church of the second century. In the reign of Trajan, denounced by heretics both as a descendant of David and as a Christian, he was tortured for many days before the consular governor Atticus and at last crucified, in the year 107, at the reputed age of one hundred and twenty; his judges, says Hegesippus, marvelled that so old a man could endure. He is honoured as apostle of the Seventy, hierarch and martyr, and his feast is April 27.

• Sosthenes, Apollos, and Companions of the Seventy

  On December 8 the Church commemorates a company of apostles of the Seventy, all named in the letters of the New Testament: Sosthenes, once ruler of the synagogue at Corinth and afterwards a bishop; Apollos, the eloquent Alexandrian of the Book of Acts; Cephas of Colophon; Tychicus, Paul's trusted messenger; Epaphroditus, whom Paul called his fellow-soldier; and Caesar, bishop of Dyrrhachium — together with the Apostle Onesiphorus, who is commemorated with them but whose principal feast and full entry stand under his own name. Chosen and sent by Christ among the Seventy (Luke 10), they laboured beside the Apostle Paul and became shepherds of the young Churches. Their memory is kept also on March 30 and, with all the Seventy, on January 4.

• Stachys, Amplias, Urban, Narcissus, Apelles and Aristobulus of the Seventy

  Stachys, Amplias, Urban, Narcissus, Apelles and Aristobulus (1st century) are six of the Seventy Apostles, all greeted by name in the sixteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans and commemorated together on October 31. Stachys was ordained first bishop of Byzantium by the Apostle Andrew and shepherded his flock at Argyropolis for sixteen years before reposing in peace; Amplias (bishop of Diospolis) and Urban (bishop of Macedonia), also consecrated by Andrew, and Narcissus (bishop of Athens) died as martyrs for destroying idols; Apelles governed a church in Asia Minor; and Aristobulus, brother of the Apostle Barnabas, carried the Gospel to Britain, where he reposed in peace. The Church keeps their joint memory and numbers them again among the Seventy on January 4.

• Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles

  On January 4 the Church keeps the Synaxis — the common assembly — of the Seventy Apostles, that second and wider company whom the Lord "appointed... and sent two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come" (Luke 10:1). Distinct from the Twelve yet joined to them in the one apostolate, the Seventy carried the Gospel to the ends of the earth as the first bishops, evangelists, and deacons of the infant Church; among them are the Lord's own brother James of Jerusalem, the Evangelists Luke and Mark, the protomartyr Stephen, and the companions of Paul — Timothy, Titus, Silas, and the many greeted by name in his epistles. Because so many of them are commemorated singly through the year and none must be reckoned less than another, the Church gathered them all into one festival "to indicate the equal honour of each," fixing it on the day after the Synaxis-days of the Circumcision and hard upon the Theophany. The roll of the Seventy was drawn up in antiquity — in the lists ascribed to Hippolytus of Rome and to Dorotheus of Tyre, and refined by later hagiographers — and, though it varies from book to book, it is kept whole in this common feast.

• Tertius, Mark, Justus and Artemas of the Seventy

  Tertius, Mark, Justus and Artemas were four apostles of the Seventy whom the Byzantine calendar commemorates together on October 30. Tertius, the scribe to whom Paul dictated the Epistle to the Romans, became second bishop of Iconium and died a martyr; Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, was bishop of Apollonias; Justus, called Barsabbas, was the candidate set beside Matthias to fill the place of Judas and later a martyred bishop of Eleutheropolis; and Artemas, the companion Paul thought to send to Titus, was bishop of Lystra and reposed in peace. Each is named in the New Testament; the Church keeps their joint memory among the Seventy sent out by the Lord.

• Thaddaeus of the Seventy

  Thaddaeus — Addai in his own Aramaic — was a Jew of Edessa who came up to Jerusalem, was baptised by John the Forerunner in the Jordan, followed Christ, and was numbered among the Seventy. After Pentecost he was sent back to his own city to fulfil the promise the Lord had made in his letter to the toparch Abgar: he healed the king of his disease, baptised him and his household and at length the whole city, put down the idols, ordained clergy and founded the church of Edessa — the mother-church of Syriac Christianity and the first Christian polity in the world by its own reckoning. He preached afterwards through Syria and Mesopotamia and built a church at Beirut, where the Byzantine tradition says he reposed in peace about the year 44. He is not the apostle of the Twelve who bears the same by-name, and the two have been confounded since antiquity.

• Theoctistus of Cucumo

  Theoctistus (†c. 800) was the founder and first abbot of a monastery at Cucumo in Sicily — the modern Caccamo, near Palermo — in the age of the iconoclast persecution. Little is recorded of him beyond that he gathered a community in the far West of the Byzantine world and made it a refuge for Greek monks who had fled the East to escape the emperors' war on the holy icons; there, honouring the images the persecutors destroyed, he governed his brethren in the ascetic life and reposed in peace about the year 800. The Church keeps his memory on January 4, among the Seventy Apostles and within the forefeast of the Theophany. He is not to be confused with the earlier Theoctistus of Palestine, the companion of Euthymius the Great.

• Timon the Deacon

  Timon was one of the seven deacons ordained by the Apostles at Jerusalem in the first days of the Church (Acts 6:1–6) and is numbered among the Seventy Apostles. The tradition sends him out from Jerusalem to Bostra, the caravan city of the province of Arabia, as its first bishop, and remembers him for a deliverance out of a furnace: cast into the fire by Jews and Greeks together, he is said to have walked out of it unharmed. Of his end the sources differ — some say he was crucified, others that he died in peace after his preaching — and the calendars accordingly style him now hieromartyr, now simply apostle. He is kept on July 28 with his fellow deacons Prochorus, Nicanor and Parmenas. As bishop of a see of the Arabian province, historically within the orbit of the patriarchate of Antioch, he belongs to the earliest layer of the Antiochian tradition's own memory.

• Zenas of the Seventy

  Zenas of the Seventy, called "the lawyer," is known from a single verse of the New Testament: Paul's charge to Titus to "send Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey with haste, that they lack nothing" (Titus 3:13). The title marks him as a learned man — trained either in Jewish law or in Roman jurisprudence — and the tradition assigns him the conduct of juridical matters in the affairs of the church. The Byzantine calendar numbers him among the Seventy and makes him bishop of Diospolis, the ancient Lydda in Palestine. He is commemorated on September 27 with the apostles Mark and Aristarchus, and with all the Seventy on January 4.

• Zosimas of Cilicia

  Zosimas of Cilicia (4th century) was a Christian hermit who lived among the wild beasts of the Cilician wilderness, having fled the cities of the persecutors. Discovered at his ease among the animals by Dometian, governor of Cilicia, while the governor was hunting, he confessed himself a Christian and was put to fierce tortures: hung head downwards with a stone at his neck and torn with iron hooks. Challenged to prove his God by summoning one of the beasts that obeyed him, he prayed, and a lion came and bore up the stone with its paw. The terrified governor ordered him released to be sent to the emperor, but the old man immediately gave up his soul to God.

Troparia & kontakia

Readings