Wednesday, 17 June 2026

Martyrs Manuel, Sabel, Ismael of Persia

Wednesday of the 3rd week after Pentecost

66 days after Pascha · Tone 1 · Liturgy · Apostles Fast

Saints commemorated

★ Holy Martyrs Manuel, Sabel and Ismael of Persia

The Holy Martyrs Manuel, Sabel and Ismael were brothers descended from an illustrious Persian family. Their father was a pagan, but their mother was a Christian who baptised the children and raised them in firm faith in Christ the Saviour. Sent by the Persian King Alamundar as his emissaries to conclude a peace treaty with the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, they were received with honour at his camp near Chalcedon. When the emperor offered the customary sacrifice to the gods and invited the Persian envoys to share in the offerings, the brothers refused, declaring that they were Christians and could not worship idols. Julian, breaking the immunity of ambassadors, annulled the treaty and had them imprisoned and tortured. Their hands and feet were nailed to trees, iron spikes were driven into their heads, and sharp splinters wedged under their fingernails and toenails. At last they were beheaded, and the emperor ordered their bodies to be burned. They suffered around the year 362, and the Persian king, hearing of their death, declared war on Rome to avenge them.

Saint Botolph of Iken

Saint Botolph was an English abbot of the seventh century, the founder of the monastery of Ikanhoe in East Anglia. Born of noble Saxon parents, he and his brother Adulph were sent to the Continent to study the monastic life, where Botolph was trained in a Benedictine house in Gaul. Returning to England around 654, he was granted by King Anna of the East Angles a desolate site on a tidal island all but surrounded by water, traditionally identified with Iken on the estuary of the river Alde in Suffolk. There he built a wooden church and gathered a community of monks, attracting hermits and labourers who together turned areas of marsh and scrub into productive grazing and farmland. Botolph also worked as an itinerant missionary in East Anglia, Kent and Sussex, and was held in such honour by his contemporaries that Saint Ceolfrid travelled from the north to learn from him. He fell asleep in the Lord around 680. The city of Boston in Lincolnshire takes its name from his church, Botolph's Town, and many ancient churches across England bear his name.

Saint Hypatius, Abbot of Rufinian Monastery

446

Saint Hypatius was born in Phrygia in Asia Minor into the family of a lawyer and received a fine secular education. At eighteen, leaving home and worldly prospects behind, he went to Thrace where for a time he herded cattle and lived with a priest who taught him to chant the Psalms. He afterwards travelled to Chalcedon and settled with two companions in the abandoned monastery of Rufinianae a few miles outside the city, which had been built by the consul Rufinus and stood empty since his murder. The community was rebuilt and soon flourished, and many monks gathered around the holy ascetic. At forty he was chosen igumen, and he guided the brotherhood for forty years more. For his strict ascetic life and his love of his neighbour he was granted the gifts of wonderworking and healing. Through his prayers bread was multiplied for the brethren, and many possessed by demons, blind, paralysed and afflicted with bleeding came to him and were made whole. He defended the Orthodox faith against the heresies of Nestorius. Saint Hypatius reposed in the year 446 at the age of eighty.

Our Holy Father Botolph, Abbot of the Monastery of Ikanhoe

680

‘Saint Botolph was born in Britain about the year 610 and in his youth became a monk in Gaul. The sisters of Ethelmund, King of East Anglia, who were also sent to Gaul to learn the monastic discipline, met Saint Botolph, and learning of his intention to return to Britain, bade their brother the King grant him land on which to found a monastery. Hearing the King’s offer, Saint Botolph asked for land not already in any man’s possession, not wishing that his gain should come through another’s loss, and chose a certain desolate place called Ikanhoe. At his coming, the demons inhabiting Ikanhoe rose up against him with tumult, threats, and horrible apparitions, but the Saint drove them away with the sign of the Cross and his prayer. Through his monastery he established in England the rule of monastic life that he had learned in Gaul. He worked signs and wonders, had the gift of prophecy, and “was distinguished for his sweetness of disposition and affability.” In the last years of his life he bore a certain painful sickness with great patience, giving thanks like Job and continuing to instruct his spiritual children in the rules of the monastic life. He fell asleep in peace about the year 680. His relics were later found incorrupt, and giving off a sweet fragrance. The place where he founded his monastery came to be called “Botolphson” (from either “Botolph’s stone” or “Botolph’s town”) which was later contracted to “Boston.”’ (Great Horologion)

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Romans — Romans 8.2-13

²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. ³For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: ⁴That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ⁵For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. ⁶For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ⁷Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. ⁸So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. ¹⁰And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

¹²Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. ¹³For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Gospel

weekly cycle

Matthew — Matthew 10.16-22

¹⁶Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. ¹⁷But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; ¹⁸And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. ¹⁹But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. ²⁰For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. ²¹And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. ²²And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.