Holy Martyrs Galaktiōn and Epistēmē of Homs

Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē

Today, the fifth of November, is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of two holy Syrian martyrs of the city of Homs: Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē. At first husband and wife, they also struggled together as ascetics, and they went together into their martyrdom for Christ after a lifetime of such struggle. The hagiography of Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē, though it bears the marks of historicity and indeed of first-hand witness, nonetheless displays something of a Christian answer to the pagan understanding of erotic love.

Saint Galaktiōn [Gk. Γαλακτίον, L. Galation or Galacteon, Ar. Jalâktiyyûn جلاكتيون] is the son of well-to-do pagan parents in Emesa – modern-day Homs in Syria – named Kleitophōn and Leukippē, who are themselves accounted as saints after their conversion. (These names, it should be noted, are also the protagonists of a contemporary Greek romantic comedy by the rhetor Achilleus Tatios, which also takes place in the city of Tyre in Phœnicia.) This couple, although wealthy, nonetheless had a problem: Leukippē was barren. Being desirous of children, Kleitophōn made generous gifts of gold and valuables to the pagan temple, but it was to no avail, and the couple remained childless.

At that time, the city of Emesa was ruled by a governor named Secundus, who was a cruel and zealous persecutor of Christians. He set up the instruments of torture on public display in the streets, and further issued a proclamation that anyone suspected of belonging to the ‘sect of the Galilean’ was to be handed over for punishment. And so it was the case that many were handed over, and still more Christians gave themselves up voluntarily to martyrdom, being unwilling to let their neighbours suffer on their account.

Among these was a man named Onouphrios, an elderly priest, who used a disguise of beggar’s rags to hide his office. He went from door to door in Emesa, begging alms – and when he saw the opportunity, he preached the Gospel of Christ. It so happened that amidst this persecution he came to the threshold of Leukippē’s home, and he asked for alms. Leukippē herself came out and attended to Onouphrios, but the wise priest sensed that the woman was troubled. He asked her about it, and Leukippē revealed her family situation to him. Onouphrios consoled her, and taught her that the one true God does not turn His back upon those who come to Him in prayer.

Leukippē believed, and consented to be baptised a Christian. It so happened that several months after her baptism, by a wonder of God, she conceived, and it was revealed to her in a dream that her son by Kleitophōn would become a true follower of Christ. She was joyful at this news, but still kept it from her husband until after their child was born. Upon hearing this, Kleitophōn also assented to be baptised, and the two of them raised their son together in the Christian faith.

Galaktiōn grew up strong and handsome, and his inward virtue was every bit as comely as his person. Kleitophōn and Leukippē saw to it that he received the best education, the wisest teachers. Inwardly, however, he was drawn toward the Church, and harboured an ambition to enter the monastic life. When he reached the age of twenty-four, his mother Leukippē departed this life. His father desired to see him marry, however, and so he found a young woman named Epistēmē [Gk. Επιστήμη, L. Epistemia, Ar. ’Ibistimiyya إبستمية], who was his match in every way. She was fittingly named, for she had all manner of knowledge and wit, in addition to being outwardly attractive; and most importantly yet, she was meek, decorous and kind-hearted. She was, however, still a pagan.

Galaktiōn had kept his monastic ambitions secret from his father, and so when he told him that he had arranged a marriage for him, Galaktiōn, understanding the Law to honour his father, went along. He visited Epistēmē several times before their marriage, and during that time he spoke to her of the Good News of Christ and convinced her to accept baptism in secret – along with one of her family’s servants, a man named Eutolmios. After their marriage, Galaktiōn and Epistēmē agreed between themselves each to retire separately into a monastic community, and they left Homs and travelled into Ægypt, where they parted ways amicably and each went into a different monastery – one for men, the other for women – on Mount Publion, which is near to Sinai. Eutolmios also became a monk, and entered the cell together with Galaktiōn.

The husband and wife each toiled and struggled in their separate cells for several years. Epistēmē received a vision during her labours, that she and Galaktiōn were standing together before a radiant King seated upon a throne, and that this King bestowed crowns upon them. This was a foreshadowing of the martyrdom that was soon to befall them.

During the reign of Trajan Decius, one detachment of Roman soldiers discovered the monasteries on Mount Publion, and moved to seize them and the monastics living there. The mountainous terrain being familiar to these holy men and women, most of them were able to flee and hide from the Romans with ease; however, Galaktiōn alone chose to remain in his cell, reading from the Psalter. That is where the soldiers founded him, arrested him, beat him and dragged him out of the monastery down the mountain.

From her vantage point Epistēmē could see the groom she had parted from when she entered the cloister, and she begged her mother superior to be allowed to share in Galaktiōn’s fate for Christ’s sake, for it had been he who had brought her to Christ. With tears in her eyes, the mother superior allowed her to leave. She too was apprehended by the soldiers. The two saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē suffered great torments for their Lord. They were condemned to death; their hands were severed at the wrists and their feet at the ankles. Their tongues were removed, and finally they were beheaded. In this way they did truly receive the crowns that had appeared in Epistēmē’s vision.

It was Epistēmē’s former servant, Eutolmios, who went and reclaimed the relics of Christ’s holy martyrs and had them buried decently. The account we have of this Life of the two saints, in fact, comes to us from Eutolmios, who put his account together based on what he himself had seen and heard. The fact that he attributed to Galaktiōn the heritage of a pagan love story only renders more poignant his own love and the love of Epistēmē, as models of a Christian erōs which transcends even death. Holy martyrs Galaktiōn and Epistēmē, betrothed fellow ascetics in life and fellow witnesses to Christ in death, pray unto Him who loves mankind to save our souls!

Apolytikion for Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē of Homs, Tone 4:

Let us the faithful honor these two betrothed athletes:
Galaktiōn and modest Epistēmē.
Their ascetic labors blossomed into martyrdom, therefore we cry to them:
“Glory to Him who has strengthened you!
Glory to Him who has crowned you!
Glory to Him who through you grants healing to all!”

Venerable Pimen the Athonite of Zographou

Saint Pimen of Zographou

The third of November in the Orthodox Church is also the feast-day of the holy and venerable Athonite father, Saint Pimen of Zographou. Another of the humble and gentle spirits in the mould of Saint Ivan of Rila and Saint Dimităr of Basarbovo, he belonged to the same nation that they did: the Bulgarian nation. He is a singular light in the dark times of the Ottoman occupation of Bulgaria, who with his own hands restored and built churches throughout his old homeland, and decorated them with beautiful frescoes.

Saint Pimen [Bg. Пимен] was born in the city of Sofia. His parents were elderly, and his mother had hitherto been barren before his birth. One night in a dream, his mother received a vision from the Holy Theotokos in a white raiment, surrounded by a multitude of ascetics. The Mother of God gave the woman to know that she would lift the barrenness from her, and also that she would bear forth a son, whose occupation in the world was indicated by those around her in the apparition. Departing from her, the woman was filled with joy, and she conceived.

She bore her son on the twenty-ninth of June, 1540. Because it was the feast-day of the leaders of the Apostles, she christened her son with the name of Pavel. From when he was young, his parents sent him to study with an elderly hieromonk named Toma, who had been on Athos when he was younger but who then served in the Church of Saint George the Greatmartyr in Sofia. The venerable Toma taught young Pavel not only his Cyrillic letters, but also how to read Holy Scripture, and as well the arts of church singing and iconography.

After his parents died, so too did young Pavel’s mentor meet his repose. On the fortieth day after his death, the hieromonk Toma appeared to Pavel in glory, and bade him go to the Holy Mountain, which would be the site of his salvation. And so Pavel took all he had – everything that his parents had left him – sold it and divided it amongst the poor of Sofia, and brought himself to the Monastery of Zographou on Mount Athos. It was here that he took the tonsure, along with the monastic name of Pimen.

Zographou Monastery, Athos, Greece

Young Pimen took quite readily to the monastic life. He was humble, thinking of himself only as a sinner, and showed himself to be kindly and gentle to all. It was natural that the other monks would come to him for a word, and his brother-monks took to calling him ‘the young Abba’. He was not, however, without enemies, for the Evil One works his way in everywhere, and preys upon the hearts of the heedless and unsuspecting. One monk became bitterly jealous of Pimen’s virtues, and took his cloak and cast it into the fire. The cloth, however, did not catch light – instead, wherever it touched the fire, the fire was extinguished. And just as the cloth extinguished the fire, so too did Pimen’s humility and goodwill overcome the malice sown in the hearts of his brethren by the wiles of the ancient enemy.

On his thirtieth birthday, on the feast-day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the Bishop of Edessa Pamfil Vodenski visited the Zographou Monastery. Against his will, the Bishop of Edessa made the young monk Pimen into a priestmonk, to serve at Zographou. Each time the young priestmonk served the Liturgy, it was with tears in his eyes as he gave to all the Body and Blood of Christ. He also gained the gift from God of wonderworking prayer. He conducted an exorcism upon one of the brethren who was tormented by dæmons, and on another occasion one brother was bitten by a poisonous serpent and died. Saint Pimen raised the brother to life again and expelled the atter by his prayers.

So that he would not fall victim to vainglory, he implored the abbot to allow him to go into some secluded place and there live the life of an anchorite. With great reluctance the abbot assented, and so Pimen left Athos for the woodlands nearby. He built a simple hut of sticks for himself, and ate only chestnuts and wild weeds for his food. He only ventured into Athos to partake of the Holy Elements. On one occasion he was visited by two brother-monks, when a wildfire broke out and threatened to engulf the enclave. But Saint Pimen made the Sign of the Cross and prayed to heaven, and at once a stormcloud blew up and a torrential downpour began, extinguishing the fire before it could reach the saint’s hut.

Thus he spent twenty-five years in his little hut near Athos. One day as he knelt in prayer he was visited in a vision by Saint George of Lydda, who was the patron both of his home church in Sofia and of the Zographou Monastery. The mighty soldier and meek martyr told Pimen that it was God’s will that he sojourn again among his own people and blood kin, who were like a flock of lost sheep without a shepherd to guard them from the beasts.

Saint Pimen – good Orthodox monk that he was – at once suspected himself of vainglory and did not believe the vision, thinking it to be possibly dæmonic in origin. And so he went to one of the elders of Athos and asked him his advice. Only when the elder perceived Saint Pimen’s vision to be genuine did he accept a blessing from the abbot, and departed into Bulgaria. He took with him a monastic disciple who was also named Pamfil, who would later commit Saint Pimen’s Life to writing. It was with sad joy and with many tears that the brothers came forth to bid farewell to Pimen, and they went with him to the borders of the lands of Zographou.

Over many years Saint Pimen travelled throughout Bulgaria. He went first to Sofia and into the villages around there, then spent some time in the Petritsoni Monastery of the Holy Dormition in Bachkovo, in southern Bulgaria. He sojourned in the north as well: in Vidin, in Silistra, in other towns. Everywhere he went, he preached the Word of God and strengthened the Bulgarian people in their faith, and worked many wonders of healing with his prayers. One man of Silistra, born blind and given his sight by the saint, asked to be tonsured a monk. Though reluctant at first, seeking to be assured that it was the man’s own will, he at last granted the man’s wish.

Saint Pimen also built churches wherever he went, or else renovated old ones which had fallen out of use under Turkish persecution, harassment and harsh taxes. He is credited with having built up or repaired as many as three hundred parish churches and fifteen monasteries with his own hands, as well as decorating them in beautiful frescoes and icons. His buildings were inspired by the Balkan Tărnovo School of architecture that characterised both Zographou and Petritsoni: compact rectangular floor plans and arched reliefs in the high stone walls. Two examples of his work are the Assumption Monastery in Cherepish, which became an important centre for calligraphy and illumination in early modern Bulgaria, and also the Suhodol Monastery of the Holy Trinity. Toward the end of his life he returned to Cherepish; it was there that the venerable saint reposed at the age of eighty years, in the year 1620. Holy venerable Pimen, builder of churches and upbuilder of the faith among the Bulgarian people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Cherepish Monastery, Stara Planina, Bulgaria

Venerable Akepsimas, Hermit of Kyrrhos

Saint Akepsimas of Kyrrhos

On the third of November we celebrate another of the great fourth-century ascetics of the desert, Saint Akepsimas of Kyrrhos. The life of this great and holy solitary of Syria – who, it must be owned, was one of the more eccentric of the anchorites treated in this work – was written down by Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos in his History of the Monks of Syria. The juxtaposition of this saint’s life with that of his contemporary Saint Mausimas, the village priest of Kyrrhos, offers a striking contrast – one living happily among people and doing works of kindness for the poor; the other one living for sixty years in total solitude.

At the same time lived Akepsimas, whose fame extends throughout the East. Immuring himself in a cell, he persevered for sixty years neither being seen nor speaking. Turning into himself and contemplating God, he received consolation from this, in accordance with the prophecy that says, ‘Take delight in the Lord, and may he grant you the requests of your heart.’ He received the food that was brought to him by stretching his hand through a small hole. To prevent his being exposed to those who wished to see him, the hole was not dug straight through the thickness of the wall, but obliquely, being made in the shape of a curve. (The food brought him was lentils soaked in water.)

Once a week he came out at night to draw sufficient water from the nearby spring. On one occasion a shepherd pastoring his animals at a distance, when it was dark, saw him move. Presuming it was a wolf—for he was bent double, laden with a quantity of iron—he got his sling ready to shoot a stone. But when his hand lost all movement for a long time and could not launch the stone, until the man of God had drawn the water and returned, he realised his mistake, and after daybreak repaired to the retreat of virtue, related what had happened and begged forgiveness. He received the remission of his sin, not by hearing a voice speak but learning of his goodwill from the gestures of his hand.

Someone else, wishing out of malign curiosity to discover what he spent all his time doing, had the presumption to climb up a plane-tree that grew alongside the enclosure. But he immediately reaped the fruits of his presumption: with half his body paralysed, from the crown of his head to his feet, he became a suppliant accusing himself of his sin. The other predicted that his health would be restored by the cutting down of the plane-tree—for the prevent another doing the same deed and suffering the same penalty, he ordered the tree to be cut down immediately. The cutting down of the tree was followed by the remission of the punishment. Such was the self-control this inspired man exercised; such was the grace he had received from the Umpire.

When about to set out on his migration from here, he foretold that he would come to the end of his life after fifty days, and received everyone who wished to see him. The leader of the Church, on his arrival, pressed him to accept the yoke of a priest. ‘I know, father,’ he said, ‘both the elevation of your philosophy and the excess of my poverty, but entrusted as I am with the episcopal office, it is in virtue of the latter not of the former that I perform ordinations. Accept then (he continued) the gift of the priesthood, a gift to which my hand ministers, but which is supplied by the grace of the all-Holy Spirit.’

To this he is said to have replied: ‘Since I am emigrating from here in a few days, I shall not quarrel about this. If I were going to live for a long time, I would utterly have fled from the heavy and fearful burden of the priesthood, terrified at answering for the deposit. But since in no long time I shall depart and leave what is here, I shall accept obediently what you command.’ And so at once, without any compulsion, the one awaited the grace on bended knee, and the other laying on his hand ministered to the Spirit.

After surviving the priesthood for a few days, he exchanged one life for another, and took up the one without old age or sorrow in place of the one full of anxiety. Everyone wished to seize his body and proposed to carry it off to his own village, but someone resolved the dispute by revealing the oaths of the saint, saying the saint had extracted oaths to commit it to burial in this same place.

Thus it was that the citizens of heaven attended to frugality even after death; neither when alive could they endure to entertain haughty thoughts, not after death did they grasp at honour from men. Instead, they transferred all their love to the Bridegroom, like modest women who are eager to be loved and praised by their spouses but despise adulation from others. Because of this the Bridegroom made them celebrated even against their will, and gave them an abundant share of renown among men; for whenever someone pursues the things of God and asks for the things of heaven, he adds to these things innumerable others, granting their requests many times over. This he enacted when he said, ‘Ask for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the rest shall be added to you’. And again: ‘He who leaves father and mother and brothers and wife and children, for my sake and for the Gospel, in this age will receive a hundredfold and in the age to come will inherit æternal life’. This he both declared and accomplished. May we, instructed by the word and example and supported by the prayers of these men, be able to ‘press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus our Lord’.

Robert Louis Wilken, professor-emeritus of the history of Christianity at the University of Virginia, makes an interesting observation about Theodoret’s editorial choices here. The juxtaposition of Saint Akepsimas’s life with that of Saint Mausimas is meant to draw a contrast between their chosen vocations: one lived in the village, among people; the other withdrew from all human contact until the very end of his life. Blessed Theodoret may, indeed, be trying to draw attention to the diversity of the Syrian ascetic disciplines. His panegyric praise of both men indicates that he is trying to remain neutral in regard to his own preferences.

The commonalities and contrasts between Saint Akepsimas and Saint Marōn are also evident and significant: in this case, what they wished for their remains and how their relics were actually treated. Here, Theodoret is not trying to remain neutral. The lay followers of Marōn fought a bitter, bloody war over his relics and carried him off, against his express wishes that he be buried alongside his teacher Saint Zebinas the Elder. Blessed Theodoret’s attitude toward the faction which carried off Saint Marōn’s relics is clearly disapproving, and he explicitly says that ‘sufficient for us instead of his tomb is his memory’. On the other hand, the followers of Akepsimas nearly came to blows over the question of where he should be buried, before it was settled that he should be buried in his own cell. Blessed Theodoret clearly commends the peaceful way in which the dispute over Saint Akepsimas’s relics was resolved, and in accord with his own wishes.

Still, here we must exclaim along with Blessed Theodoret, regarding the hesychast Saint Akepsimas as well as his fellow ascetics in Syria: ‘How great and how many are the athletes of virtue and with which crowns they are decked!’ May they all continue to pray for us. Holy and venerable Akepsimas, silent contemplator of the mysteries of the divine, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Venerable Markianos, Hermit of Kyrrhos

Qinnasrîn, Aleppo Governorate, Syria

The fifteenth of January in the Orthodox Church is the feast day of Saint Markianos, a fourth-century hermit who lived in the desert outside the settlement of Kyrrhos in Northern Syria. He was a contemporary of Emperors Constantius II and Valens, and was known to Saint Flavian, the thirty-third Patriarch of Antioch.

Saint Markianos was a native of Kyrrhos, a Seleucid city which is now the treasured archæological site of Nabî Hûrî نبي حوري on the Turkish-Syrian border, seventy miles northwest of Aleppo. The Prologue of Ohrid states that Saint Markianos was of noble ancestry and possessed notable physical beauty. However, he left everything aside for the sake of Christ, and pursued the life of a desert anchorite outside Khalkis – modern-day Qinnasrîn قنسرين about twenty-five kilometres southwest of Aleppo in Syria.

There, Markianos built for himself a small cell and lived there for many years in strict fasting and constant prayer. He had no need to light candles for his reading and prayer rule at night, because a sweet divine light suffused the room and was sufficient for his eyes. During his time he was a great wonderworker and performed many prodigies in Christ’s name for the sick and the suffering. He also attracted to him two devoted disciples, whom he housed in cells separate from his own, though he taught them happily what he knew.

As his fame grew, Saint Flavian called upon the hermit to end his strict self-imposed solitude and be a light and example to Christians in the city. Saint Markianos declined decisively. However, he was happy to receive guests in his cell, and with gentle words and insight he was able to direct many Syrians to the Orthodox faith and save them from various hæresies. Before his blessed repose in the Lord in 387, he directed one of his two disciples, Eusebius, to take his body and bury it unmarked in the desert, far away from his cell, to avoid the contention that would arise over his relics between the various churches. Holy hermit Markianos, bearer of the light of Christ in the Syrian desert, pray unto God for us!

Apolytikion to Saint Markianos, Tone 8:

By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
And your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
O our holy father Markianos, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!

Holy Unmercenaries Kosmas and Damianos of Asia

Saints Kosmas and Damianos of Mesopotamia

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church we commemorate Saints Kosmas and Damianos, the holy anargyroi and wonderworkers of third-century Mesopotamia. Among the most celebrated saints of Syria and of the Arab world, the brothers Kosmas and Damianos embody the selflessness and social concern of the Early Church toward the poor and sick. Their cultus is universal, but – these two saints being from Cilicia in Asia Minor and buried in Mesopotamia – has its centre in the Patriarchate of Antioch.

Saints Kosmas [Gk. Κοσμάς, L. Cosmas, Ar. Quzmâ قزما] and Damianos [Gk. Δαμιανός, L. Damianus, Ar. Damyân دميان] were twin brothers, born in the province of Cilicia, probably in the city of Ægeæ (modern-day Yumurtalık), in the third century, to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Theodotē. The Roman hagiography states that they were the eldest of seven brothers from this marriage. Even so, their father died when they were quite young; as a result, they were raised by their mother. Saint Theodotē took care to read to them from the Scriptures, to teach them the præcepts of the Christian life, and kept them in purity of life. The two boys in particular were impressed by the following commandment from Christ in the Gospel of Saint Matthew: ‘Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.’

Evidently, this is exactly what they did – to the very letter. When they grew to adulthood, full of righteousness and virtue as well as a formidable learning and training in the arts of medicine, the two brothers Kosmas and Damianos went out and healed the sick – paying special attention to the poor, who could not afford to pay another physician for a cure. They cured all manner of ailments of the body, as well as those of the spirit, and they even cured animals that were brought to them. Among the hundreds of wonders they performed: they restored sight to the blind, cooled fevers, enlivened the joints of the paralysed, and destroyed parasites such as intestinal worms. They also set broken bones and, in one famous incident, performed a leg replacement surgery on a Syrian man using the requisite limb of a black Ethiopian man who had recently died. Following precisely the commandment of Christ, they did not ask, nor did they receive, any manner of payment for their services.

There was one exception, and it very nearly cost Damianos the friendship of his brother. The two physicians were called to treat a woman named Palladia, who was deathly ill. None of the other doctors nearby would treat her, as her condition was deemed hopeless. The two physicians came to her and prayed with her and treated her, and by a wonder of God her illness was cured. Palladia rose from her bed in fullness of health, giving praise to God. As the two saints were making ready to leave, the woman quietly approached Damianos and handed him three eggs, telling him: ‘Take this small gift in the Name of the Holy Life-Creating Trinity‭, ‬the Father‭, ‬Son‭, ‬and Holy Spirit‭.‬’ Upon hearing the name of the Holy Trinity, Damianos – who had never taken payment for any work of healing he had done – did not dare to refuse the eggs from Palladia’s hand.

When Kosmas heard of what his brother had done, he was grievously upset, for he believed that his brother had broken their vow. He fell ill sometime later, and on his deathbed he gave very stern instructions that Damianos’s body was to be buried someplace far off from his own. Damianos himself reposed in the Lord shortly after this, and the faithful were left in a quandary as to how to arrange the burial of the two saints. While they were discussing, a cow camel which Kosmas had treated for distemper walked over to them and began speaking in a human voice, saying: ‘Kosmas and Damianos cured not only you men, but also we dumb animals. Therefore I, in gratitude to them, come to tell you that the Lord wills it, that you bury them together.’

It came out thereafter, as the men were investigating Saint Damianos’s acts, that he had not accepted the eggs from Palladia out of greed, but because she had pronounced the Name of the Lord in Three Persons and he sought to honour the Name. Thus the relics of the two saints were buried together side by side in tombs at Thereman in Mesopotamia. A church was built up over their relics.

Many wonders are attributed to the relics of Saints Kosmas and Damianos, but one in particular is mentioned in their hagiography. A certain man named Malchos lived near the church of Saints Kosmas and Damianos, and he knew that soon he would have to undertake a long journey, leaving his wife behind. Before he left, he went into the church and prayed over the relics of the two holy unmercenaries, entreating them to watch over his wife and pray to Christ God for her protection.

One of Malchos’s friends, under the design of the Evil One, plotted to kill Malchos’s wife. Waiting for some time after Malchos had gone, he approached the woman, telling her that Malchos had sent him to bring her home with him. Because he was a familiar face, the woman agreed to go with him, and the two of them set off. But instead of taking her to his house, the wicked man took her into a deserted place and attacked her. In fright, and in deadly peril of her life, the woman called upon the name of the Lord to protect her.

At once two fearsome-looking men appeared. Seeing them, the wicked one let go of the woman and fled, and the two men gave chase such that he fell off of a cliff. The two men then led the woman back to her own home; and once she had reached there safely she turned to them, bowed deeply, and asked them: ‘My saviours, to whom I shall be grateful for the rest of my days: what are your names?’

The two men replied to her: ‘We are the servants of Christ. Our names are Kosmos and Damianos.’ And once they had spoke, they vanished from sight. Joyfully the woman told everyone around her what had happened to her and how she was delivered from death, and then she went into the church, found the icon of the two holy unmercenaries, and revered it with tears and prayers of thanksgiving. From that time forward, Saints Kosmos and Damianos have also been regarded as the protectors of the wholeness and harmony within marriage, and couples seeking help call upon their intercessions. Very early on their cultus spread into Russia, with the earliest centre of their veneration being at Velikii Novgorod, where the temple in their honour dates back to 1271.

There are two other pairs of saints by the names of Kosmas and Damianos: one of these pairs was martyred in Rome and are venerated on the first of July, and the other was martyred in Ægeæ under Diocletian and are venerated on the seventeenth of October. The Saint Kosmas and Saint Damianos whom we venerate today are always portrayed in the garb of laymen; they usually have an attribute of a medicine-box on their icon, and they are shown holding spoons for the medicine. These spoons have handles in the shape of a cross, to show that all cures are ultimately from God. Holy and wise unmercenary physicians Kosmos and Damianos, friends of the poor, healers of the sick and defenders of those without any defence, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saints Kosmas and Damianos, Tone 8:

Holy unmercenaries and wonderworkers, Kosmas and Damianos,
Heal our infirmities.
Freely you have received; freely you give to us.

Holy Saint Theodotē of Asia, Mother of Kosmas and Damianos

Saint Theodotē of Mesopotamia (centre) with her sons

Together with Saints Kosmas and Damianos today, we also commemorate their loving and righteous mother, Saint Theodotē. As with Saint Martha of Antioch, the mother of Symeōn the Younger Stylite, Saint Theodotē was not a noblewoman, not a martyr and not a celibate ascetic. Her sanctity was the sanctity of the married woman, and her sanctity was the sanctity of the mother. It is also somewhat wrong, I think, with either of these saints, to make them mere auxiliaries to their more famous holy sons. The hagiographies are actually clear on this point; it is we modern believers who tend to get it backwards. These sons were not the ones who sanctified their mothers: the mothers were the ones who taught these great saints of the Church sanctity. We honour these women for their own sake, because it is through them and by their work that the holiness of their sons was accomplished.

That having been said, we do not know much, actually, about the early life of Saint Theodotē [Gk. Θεοδότη, L. Theodota, Ar. Ṯiyyûdût ثيودوت]. We know that she lived in a ‘mixed marriage’ – that she was married to a pagan husband, but that she herself was Christian. The two of them had seven children together, the eldest two of whom were the saintly twins. At the same time, she lived obediently within her ‘mixed marriage’ until her husband died, and she took particular care to raise her young sons Kosmas and Damianos in a holy Christian life. The hagiography of Saints Kosmas and Damianos tells us that she taught them by her own gentle example, and also that she read to them from Holy Scripture. She ‘preserved her children in purity of life according to the command of the Lord’. It was because of the upbringing that these saints received from their mother Theodotē that they grew into the virtuous men that they were. Holy Saint Theodotē, loving and selfless mother who set your children upon the path of selflessness, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Holy Martyr Kaisarios of Damascus, and those with him

Bâb Tûmâ, one of the seven ancient gates of Damascus
which fell to the Islâmic invasion in 634

The first of November is also the feast-day of seven martyrs of seventh-century Damascus: Saint Kaisarios and those with him. Oftentimes Kaisarios alone is named, or alongside one other martyr, Saint Dasios. Other authorities give the full list of the names of this group of Damascene martyrs as: Kaisarios, Agrippa, Adrianos, Dasios, Sabba, Sabianos and Thōmas.

Their brief hagiographical entry states of these seven martyrs only that they were arrested in Damascus, and that they were instructed to deny Christ but refused. After this they were subjected to various tortures, none of which were effective in converting them. In the end, all seven were beheaded by the sword. Nothing is said about the nature of the persecution or the officials which placed them under arrest. However, given that Damascus in the seventh century was one of the conquests of the early Caliphate, it seems reasonable to assume that Saint Kaisarios and his companions suffered persecution during the expansion of Islâm or else during the rule of the ’Umawîyah which followed. Holy martyr Kaisarios and all those who accompanied you, steadfast confessors of Christ before your persecutors, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!