Saturday before Elevation

Saints commemorated

• Martyrs Menodora, Metrodora, Nymphodora

  Menodora, Metrodora and Nymphodora (†c. 305–311) were three sisters of Bithynia in Asia Minor, consecrated virgins who withdrew to a solitary life of prayer and fasting near the warm springs of Pythia, where the sick were healed through their prayers. Denounced in the last great persecution, they were tried before the governor Fronto and, refusing to sacrifice, were tortured and killed in turn — Menodora first, and four days later Metrodora and Nymphodora before her battered body. They are the chief saints of September 10, with a proper kontakion and canon in the Menaion; the Menologion of Basil II preserves their miniature.

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• 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.

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• Barypsabas of Dalmatia

  Barypsabas (dated by the received account to the 2nd century) was a hermit venerated as the guardian of a most unusual relic: a gourd-vessel said to hold blood from the side of the Saviour — or, in the interpretation of Nikodemos the Hagiorite, blood that had flowed from a pierced icon of Christ — through which many healings were worked. Entrusted with the vessel in a succession running from a righteous eyewitness of the Crucifixion through two hermits, Barypsabas was attacked at night by men who coveted the relic's miracles for gain, and was beaten to death; the treasure they sought escaped them, having passed to his disciple. His martyrdom is pictured in the Menologion of Basil II.

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• Peter and Paul of Nicaea

  Peter and Paul (9th century and earlier) were bishops of Nicaea in Bithynia, joined in a single commemoration on September 10. Peter is a documented confessor of the second iconoclast persecution: he suffered for the holy icons under the emperor Leo the Armenian, and four letters addressed to him by Theodore the Studite survive from the years 816–823; he reposed no earlier than 823. Of Paul nothing is recorded — his name first appears beside Peter's in an eleventh-century Greek prologue. The pairing is a fixture of the calendar rather than a companionship in life: two holy bishops of one see, remembered together.

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• Pulcheria the Empress

  Pulcheria (399–453) was the empress who, more than any other lay person, steered the Church of the fifth century through its two greatest storms. Daughter of the emperor Arcadius, she was proclaimed Augusta at fifteen and governed the East as guardian of her brother Theodosius II, having taken with her sisters a public vow of perpetual virginity. She upheld the title Theotokos against Nestorius and stood behind the Council of Ephesus (431); widowed of no one, she accepted a nominal marriage to Marcian on condition her virginity be preserved, and with him convoked the Council of Chalcedon (451), whose fathers acclaimed her a "new Helen." Builder of the great Marian churches of Constantinople, she died in peace in 453, having given her wealth to the poor.

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• Finnian of Movilla

  Finnian of Movilla (†579), called Findbarr ("fair-head") in the Irish martyrologies and Winnin in Scotland, was abbot and bishop of Movilla (Mag Bile) on Strangford Lough in Co. Down, which he founded about the middle of the sixth century, and is reckoned a patron of Ulster and of its royal race, the Dál Fiatach, from whom he sprang. Trained by tradition at Nendrum and at the "Great Monastery" of the Britons (Whithorn), he is credited with bringing to Ireland an early copy of Jerome's Gospel text, and stands in Irish tradition as the master of Columba of Iona and the owner of the psalter whose secret copying provoked the famous judgment "to every cow her calf." The Martyrology of Óengus keeps him on September 10 as "a sage for whom Ireland is sad."

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• Frithestan of Winchester

  Frithestan (†932/933) was bishop of Winchester for some twenty-two years in the reigns of Edward the Elder and Æthelstan, consecrated in 909 by Archbishop Plegmund — by William of Malmesbury's account one of seven bishops consecrated in a single day when the West Saxon sees were divided. A tradition preserved in the later martyrologies makes him a disciple of St Grimbald; the Orthodox England list remembers him as a bishop who "loved the poor and prayed much for the departed." His name is woven in gold on the famous stole and maniple found in the coffin of St Cuthbert at Durham — "for the pious bishop Frithestan" — the finest surviving English embroideries of his age. He resigned his see in 931 in favour of St Byrnstan and died soon after; a modest cult was kept at Winchester, with his feast on September 10.

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British Isles and Ireland

• St. Finian of Ulster, abbot (579)

Readings

Troparia & kontakia