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Holy great-martyr Menas of Egypt
Saint Menas was born about the year 285 in Nikiou, near Memphis in Egypt, the son of pious Christian parents named Eudoxios and Euphemia. At the age of fifteen he entered the Roman army, in which his father had served before him, and he attained high rank under the centurion Firmilian in the region of Cotyaeum in Phrygia, during the reigns of Diocletian (284 to 305) and Maximian (305 to 311).
When the imperial edict against the Christians was published, Menas refused to take part in the persecution of his fellow believers. He laid aside his military belt and weapons and withdrew to a mountain in the region, where for five years he led the life of a hermit, in fasting, vigil, and unceasing prayer. There he received a vision of angels crowning the holy martyrs with three crowns, for the threefold struggle of celibacy, asceticism, and martyrdom. The vision strengthened him to seek confession of Christ in public.
Coming down into Cotyaeum during a great pagan festival, he stood in the midst of the assembled crowd and proclaimed himself a Christian, denouncing the worship of idols. He was arrested and brought before the prefect Pyrrhus, who tried to break him by flatteries, threats, and at last by long and savage tortures. Menas remained unmoved and openly confessed Christ. He was sentenced to be beheaded outside the city, and was martyred about the year 304. Christians from his native country brought back his relics to Egypt, where they were enshrined at Lake Mareotis. From the wonderworking shrine that grew up there came a stream of healings of every disease and protection in time of war, and Saint Menas became one of the most venerated wonderworkers of the Christian East.
Holy Martyr Menas
c. 304
This holy Martyr was an Egyptian and a soldier during the reigns of Diocletian and Maximian. Though he was known for his valor in combat, he renounced his soldier’s rank when his legion was ordered to seize Christians in north Africa. Fleeing to the mountains, he dwelt there for some time in silence and solitude, devoting his days to prayer. In time, he presented himself at a pagan festival, denounced the idols and declared himself a Christian. For this he was handed over to the governor of the city, who subjected him to horrible tortures and finally had him beheaded. Some faithful retrieved part of his relics and gave them honorable burial near Lake Mareotis, about thirty miles from Alexandria. The church built over his tomb became a place of pilgrimage not only for countless Egyptians but for Christians all over the world: evidence has been found of journeys to his shrine from as far away as Ireland.
The Synaxarion gives an account of the Saint’s intervention in the Second World War: “In June 1942, during the North-Africa campaign that was decisive for the outcome of the Second World War, the German forces under the command of General Rommel were on their way to Alexandria, and happened to make a halt near a place which the Arabs call El-Alamein after Saint Menas. An ancient ruined church there was dedicated to the Saint; and there some people say he is buried. Here the weaker Allied forces including some Greeks confronted the numerically and militarily superior German army, and the result of the coming battle seemed certain. During the first night of engagement, Saint Menas appeared in the midst of the German camp at the head of a caravan of camels, exactly as he was shown on the walls of the ruined church in one of the frescoes depicting his miracles. This astounding and terrifying apparition so undermined German morale that it contributed to the brilliant victory of the Allies. The Church of Saint Menas was restored in thanksgiving and a small monastery was established there.”
Holy martyr Victor of Damascus
The Holy Martyr Victor was a soldier in the Roman army during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161 to 180). Of Italian birth and Christian faith, he was stationed in the city of Damascus in Syria, where he became known for his bravery and uprightness. When the persecution of Christians broke out, the emperor commanded his soldiers to confirm their loyalty by offering sacrifice to the pagan gods. Victor refused, declaring openly that he served only Christ, the King of all.
He was handed over for torture. By the power of his prayer he came through every torment unharmed, and the magistrate, ordering a sorcerer to administer poisoned drinks, was astonished to see Victor swallow them without injury. The sorcerer, recognising the power of God, threw aside his arts and confessed Christ before all. Several blind soldiers received their sight at Victor's prayer.
Seeing that he could not break the saint, the prefect ordered Victor to be beheaded. As they led him to execution, Victor foretold that within twelve days the magistrate himself would die and that his commanding officer would within twenty-four days fall captive to the enemy. All this came to pass exactly as he had said.
Witnessing his miracles, the young Christian woman Stephanida (Stephanis), wife of one of the soldiers, openly glorified Christ, and was condemned to a cruel death by being tied to two palm trees that had been bent down to the ground and were then released, tearing her body apart. The two martyrs suffered together in the second century at Damascus, and their relics were buried by the faithful.
Holy martyr Vincent of Saragossa, deacon
Saint Vincent was born in the latter part of the third century at Huesca in Spain, into a Christian family. Educated by Bishop Valerius of Saragossa, he was ordained deacon to assist his elderly bishop in preaching and teaching. Because the bishop suffered from an impediment of speech, Vincent was given the office of preaching to the faithful, and he served the Church of Saragossa with great learning and zeal.
During the persecution of Diocletian, in the early fourth century, the imperial governor Dacian summoned Bishop Valerius and his deacon to Valencia. Valerius was sent into exile, but Dacian turned the full weight of his fury on Vincent, hoping by torments to break the spirit of the younger man. The saint was stretched on the rack, his flesh torn with iron hooks, his limbs scorched with red-hot plates, and his body laid upon a bed of broken pottery. Throughout each torture he answered the governor with calm words of confession, until at last, his strength spent, he yielded his soul to Christ around the year 304.
His body was first cast into a field to be devoured by wild beasts, but a raven defended it; then it was thrown into the sea sewn into a sack, but the waves returned it untouched to the shore. The faithful gathered up the relics with reverence, and his shrine became one of the great places of pilgrimage in the West. The Orthodox Church commemorates the deacon and martyr on 11 November as well as on 22 January, his principal feast in the West.
Saint Martin the Merciful, bishop of Tours
Saint Martin was born about the year 316 at Sabaria in Pannonia, in modern Hungary, the son of a Roman officer. He was brought up in Pavia in northern Italy, where as a boy he was drawn to the catechumenate of the Christian Church against the wishes of his pagan father. Following his father's profession he was enrolled in the Roman cavalry and served in Gaul. While stationed at Amiens, on a winter's day he met a beggar shivering at the city gate, cut his soldier's cloak in two with his sword, and gave half to the poor man. The following night Christ appeared to him in a dream, clothed in the half cloak that he had given away, saying, "Martin, still a catechumen, has covered me with this garment." Soon afterwards he received holy baptism.
After leaving the army he placed himself under the spiritual direction of Saint Hilary of Poitiers, by whom he was ordained an exorcist and later a priest. He founded at Liguge near Poitiers a monastery, the first known monastic community in Gaul, and lived there in great austerity. In 371 he was chosen bishop of Tours by the unanimous voice of clergy and people, who used a stratagem to draw the unwilling monk out of his cell. He accepted the office on condition that he might continue to live as a monk, and founded the monastery of Marmoutier on the Loire as his episcopal residence.
As bishop he travelled tirelessly through the countryside of Gaul, baptising the heathen, overturning pagan altars, and founding rural parishes. He worked many miracles of healing and of casting out demons, and is regarded as the father of monasticism in the West. He earned the surname "the Merciful" by his open-handed care for the poor and for prisoners. Worn out with labours and old age, he reposed at Candes in his diocese on 8 November 397, and was buried at Tours on 11 November, the day on which the Orthodox East and the West alike commemorate him.
Saint Theodore the Studite, abbot and confessor
Saint Theodore was born in 759 in Constantinople, the eldest son of Photios, an imperial financial officer, and Theoktiste, both of them devout Orthodox who, when iconoclasm was at its height, embraced the monastic life. As a young man Theodore received an excellent education in classical letters and theology under the direction of his uncle, Saint Plato of Sakkoudion. Together with Plato he entered monastic life at the family estate of Sakkoudion in Bithynia, where he was tonsured a monk and later ordained priest by the patriarch Saint Tarasios.
He succeeded his uncle as abbot of Sakkoudion, and on account of Saracen raids the community moved to Constantinople and refounded the ancient monastery of Stoudios, which under his leadership became the spiritual heart of the Byzantine capital and a model of cenobitic life for the whole Orthodox East. He composed for it a strict typikon, hymns, catecheses, and the Lesser Catechetical Discourses still read in monasteries today.
Theodore stood up boldly against successive emperors. He opposed the unlawful second marriage of the emperor Constantine VI, for which he was scourged and exiled. When iconoclasm was revived under Leo V the Armenian, he led the defence of the holy icons, refusing to keep silence even when the emperor threatened him with death. For this he was repeatedly imprisoned, beaten, and exiled, suffering many years of hardship in remote prisons.
After enduring exile under three iconoclast emperors he was permitted to return towards the end of his life. He withdrew to the monastery of Saint Tryphon and afterwards to the island of Prinkipo in the Princes' Islands, where he reposed in peace on 11 November 826. His relics, with those of his brother Saint Joseph of Thessalonica, were translated to the Stoudios Monastery on 26 January 844, after the final triumph of Orthodoxy. He is honoured on 11 November as the day of his repose and on 26 January for the translation of his relics.
Our Righteous Father Theodore the Studite
826
“Saint Theodore the Studite was born in Constantinople in 759; his pious parents were named Photinus and Theoctiste. He assumed the monastic habit in his youth, at the monastery called Sakkoudion, and became abbot there in 794. About the year 784 he was ordained deacon, and later presbyter by the most holy Patriarch Tarasius. On joining the brotherhood of the Monastery of Studium (which was named after its founder Studius, a Roman consul), the Saint received the surname “Studite.” He proved to be a fervent zealot for the traditions of the Fathers and contested even unto death for the sake of his reverence for the holy icons. He endured three exiles because of his pious zeal. During the third one, to which he was condemned by the Iconoclast autocrat, Leo the Armenian, he endured courageously being beaten and bound and led from one dark dungeon to another for seven whole years. Finally he was recalled from exile by Michael the Stutterer. Receiving thus a small respite from his labours of long endurance, he reposed in the Lord on November 11, 826, a Sunday, while his disciples, who stood round about him, chanted the 118th Psalm. Some say that after receiving the immaculate Mysteries, he himself began chanting this psalm. And on reaching the verse, “I will never forget Thy statutes, for in them hast Thou quickened me” (v. 93) he gave up his spirit, having lived for sixty-seven years. In addition to his other sacred writings, he composed, with the collaboration of his brother Joseph, almost the whole of the compunctionate book of the Triodion.” (Great Horologion)
St Theodore helped to establish the Studion (or Stoudion) Monastery in Constantinople, and was its Abbot. Under his guidance the Stoudion Monastery became the leading center of Orthodox piety and Byzantine culture of its time. The monks lived a radically common life: they did not even have their own cells, but slept in large dormitories.