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Holy Great Martyr Catherine of Alexandria
Saint Catherine was born about the year 287 in Alexandria, the daughter of Constus, governor of the city under the Emperor Maximian, and was renowned both for her remarkable beauty and for an excellent education in philosophy, rhetoric, medicine, and the works of the greatest teachers of antiquity. Refusing all the suitors who sought her hand because of her wealth and rank, she declared that she would only marry a man who surpassed her in birth, beauty, wealth, and wisdom. A holy elder gave her an icon of the Mother of God and the Christ Child, and after fervent prayer she beheld the Lord in a vision and was instructed in the Christian faith. Baptised by the elder, she received from the hands of the Lord himself a ring as a sign of their mystical betrothal.
When the Emperor Maximian came to Alexandria for a great pagan festival, Saint Catherine boldly approached him and rebuked him for his cruelty toward the Christians. Unable to answer her, he summoned fifty of the most learned philosophers and rhetoricians of the empire to dispute with her, but the saint by the grace of the Holy Spirit overcame them all, and they confessed Christ and were burned alive by the emperor's order. The empress herself, the commander Porphyrius, and two hundred of his soldiers were also converted by Catherine and gave their lives for Christ. The emperor then commanded that the saint be tortured upon four wheels set with iron spikes, but an angel shattered the wheels into pieces, killing many pagans nearby. At last she was beheaded, in about the year 305, and her body was carried by angels to Mount Sinai, where it was found centuries later by monks of the monastery that bears her name.
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Holy Great Martyr Mercurius of Caesarea in Cappadocia
Saint Mercurius was a Scythian by descent, born about the year 225 in Cappadocia into a family that had long served in the Roman army. At the age of seventeen he too enlisted as a soldier, and during the reign of the Emperor Decius (249 to 251) he distinguished himself for his courage and fidelity. In one battle against an invading barbarian army an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the form of a noble man and presented him with a sword, with which the saint cut through the ranks of the enemy and slew their king, winning the victory for Rome. The grateful emperor honoured him richly and appointed him commander of the entire army.
When the same emperor began his persecution of the Christians, the angel appeared to Saint Mercurius again and reminded him of the true God who had given him the victory. Cast down in repentance, the saint hastened to the emperor, removed the sword and the military belt that had been given him as honours, threw them down at the emperor's feet, and openly confessed himself a Christian. He was subjected to long and savage torments, scourged, hung up, slashed with iron hooks, and burned with fire, yet he remained unshaken and was healed each time by an angel. At last he was beheaded at Caesarea in Cappadocia about the year 251. Saint Basil the Great later prayed before an icon of the Mother of God on which Saint Mercurius was depicted with a spear, asking that the apostate Julian be prevented from returning to oppress the Church, and tradition holds that the great martyr was the soldier who slew Julian during his Persian campaign.
Holy Hieromartyr Clement, Bishop of Rome
c. 100
He was instructed in the Faith of Christ by St Peter himself, and may be the Clement mentioned by the Apostle Paul as a fellow-worker in Philippians 4:3. He was consecrated Bishop of Rome about the year 91; some traditions call him the first Bishop of Rome, others the third after Sts Linus and Anacletus. (This is not necessarily inconsistent: in the Apostolic age, the offices of Elder and Bishop were not strictly distinguished, and the three bishops may have served at the same time or by turns.) He is the author of the Epistle of Clement, which was so highly esteemed in the early Church that it is often found in early versions of the New Testament. The holy Bishop effected countless conversions in Rome, even bringing the Prefect Sisinius and his wife Theodora to the Faith after miraculously healing them of blindness. The bishop’s success so angered the Emperor Trajan that he had Clement exiled to the Crimea, on the far eastern frontier of the Empire. There the holy bishop continued to work wonders of evangelism, founding seventy-five churches in one year and bringing countless pagans to faith in Christ. Finally, to put a stop to the Saint’s work, the Governor of the region had him cruelly tortured, then thrown into the Black Sea with an anchor around his neck. More than 700 years later, in 860, St Cyril (commemorated May 11) arrived in the Crimea, sent by St Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople. He found the relics of St Clement faithfully preserved there and brought part of them back to Constantinople.
Holy Martyrs Augusta the Empress, Porphyrius the Stratelates, and the two hundred soldiers
These holy martyrs suffered together with the Great Martyr Catherine of Alexandria during the persecution of the Emperor Maximian about the year 305. While Saint Catherine lay in prison after her dispute with the philosophers, the Empress Augusta, who is also called Faustina in some accounts, was moved by reports of her wisdom and holiness and went secretly by night, accompanied by the imperial commander Porphyrius and a guard of two hundred soldiers, to visit her in her cell. There they beheld a wondrous light shining about the saint and angels tending her wounds, and Saint Catherine instructed them in the truth of the faith.
Believing in Christ, the empress, the commander, and the two hundred soldiers all received the seal of holy baptism. When the emperor learned what had happened he was filled with rage. He commanded that his wife and Porphyrius and the soldiers be beheaded for refusing to deny Christ, and they all received the unfading crown of martyrdom on the same day. Saint Augusta is honoured as a model of imperial repentance, Saint Porphyrius as a noble soldier of Christ, and the two hundred as a witness that the gospel can shine even within the prison cell.
Holy Hieromartyr Peter of Alexandria
312
Saint Peter was Bishop of Alexandria for twelve years. It was he who excommunicated Arius. When some of Arius’ followers appealed to the Bishop to restore Arius to the communion of the Church, they were surprised by the bishop’s vehement refusal, for the heretic had not yet clearly and publicly made known his blasphemous teaching that the Son is a creation of the Father. The holy bishop then revealed to these followers a vision he had seen, in which Christ appeared to him as a child wearing a garment torn in half from head to foot. When St Peter asked the Lord who had rent His garment, he said that it was Arius, who must not be received back into communion. The holy bishop was beheaded during the reign of Maximinus. He is called the “Seal of the Martyrs” because he was the last Bishop of Alexandria to suffer martyrdom under the pagan Emperors.
Holy Martyr Mercurius of Smolensk
1238
He was a soldier from Byzantium, one of the defenders of Smolensk when it was besieged by the Tatars in 1238. One day the Mother of God appeared to Mercurius and told him that the Tatars were preparing a surprise attack — and, further, that he must take up arms and attack the enemy singlehandedly. Placing all his trust in God, the lone soldier threw himself against the Tatar host crying ‘Most Holy Mother of God, help me!’ He was quickly surrounded and cut down, and it appeared that his action had been as foolhardy as it had seemed, when a woman at the head of a glorious host, all of them surrounded by light, appeared and threw back the Tatar army. The next morning the people of Smolensk found the ground covered with the bodies of their enemies. They buried Mercurius in the Cathedral, where he has been venerated as a Martyr ever since.