23 August / 5 September

The Holy Martyr Lupus

This holy man was a servant of St Dimitrios of Salonica. When St Dimitrios was beheaded by the Emperor Maximian, Lupus dipped the hem of his garment and his ring in the martyr's blood. Lupus worked many miracles in Salonica with this garment and ring, healing people of every pain and infirmity. The Emperor Maximian, who was still staying in Salonica, discovered this, and commanded that Lupus be tortured and killed. But the soldiers who drew their weapons on Lupus turned one on the other and wounded one another. As Lupus was not yet baptised, although he was a Christian, he prayed to God that He would somehow bring about his baptism before his death. On this, water suddenly poured down on the holy martyr from a cloud, and he thus received baptism. After harsh torture, he was beheaded and entered into the heavenly Kingdom; The Hieromartyr Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons; The Hieromartyr Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons - He was in his youth a pupil of St Polycarp, the disciple of the apostles, who sent him to preach in Gaul. After St Pothinus's death by martyrdom, Irenaeus was made bishop. In his numerous writings, Irenaeus both expounded the Orthodox faith and defended it against heretics. He suffered for Christ in the time of the Emperor Severus, in 202, along with nineteen thousand Christians.

Holy Martyr Ebba the Younger, abbess of Coldingham, sister of King Oswy and her companions (870)

Abbess at Coldingham, Berwickshire, Scotland, a double monastery that had been founded by Saint Ebbe the Elder, and which was the largest in the country at the time. When the monastery was attacked by Scandinavian pirates, Ebbe gathered her nuns and exhorted them to save themselves from falling into the hands of the pirates by voluntary disfiguring themselves. She then set an example by cutting off her own nose and upper lip; the other nuns did the same. When the Vikings broke into the convent, they were so horrified and angry by what the women had done to escape being raped, they locked them all in, set fire to the house, and burned them all to death.

On the same day: St Victor