Turkish Saints

It’s been a long time since I’ve published a blog post on saints and even longer since the end of Lent. But I wanted to finish exploring the places we’ve been through the eyes and the lives of the country’s greatest faithful. So, here we are again – Episode 9: Saints in Turkey.

In this post:

St. Euphemia

Feast day: September 16

Euphemia lived at the turn of the 3rd and 4th centuries. She is believed to have resided in present-day Istanbul.

The governor decreed that all inhabitants of the city participate in sacrifices to the Greek deity Ares. Not wishing to take part, Euphemia and 49 other Christians hid, but they were found. She and her companions were tortured for several days, and then all except Euphemia were sent to Emperor Diocletian for trial. Euphemia, the youngest, faced further torture, including the wheel. She was also placed in the arena to be killed by lions, but instead, the animals licked her wounds. It is believed she died from wounds inflicted by a wild bear in the arena.

St. Apollinaris of Ravenna

Feast day: July 20
Patron of: epilepsy & gout

It is believed that Apollinaris was from Antioch, Syria (now part of present-day Turkey), and was a disciple of St. Peter, who may have consecrated him as the first Bishop of Ravenna. He served as bishop for 26 years and faced constant persecution.

Apollinaris’ miracles and his preaching attracted attention because they won many converts. The pagans, furious at this change, beat him cruelly and drove him from the city. A group of Christians found him half-dead on the seashore and hid him. However, he was captured and forced to walk on burning coals and then was once again expelled from the city. When he returned to Ravenna a third time, he was again captured, beaten, tortured, and flung into a dungeon to starve to death.

However, after four days, he was sent to Greece, where the cycle of preaching, miracles, and suffering repeated itself. After his presence caused the oracles to be silent, he was sent to Italy. After three years, he returned to Ravenna one more time, but he was savagely beaten. He remained alive for seven days, foretelling of increased persecution before the Church’s final triumph.

St. Theodore Tiron

Feast day: November 9
Patron of: soldiers & against storms

Theodore was a Roman soldier born in the third century in the Eastern Roman Empire. His cohort was sent to Pontus (on the Black Sea) for winter quarters. He and his fellow soldiers were obliged to perform a pagan sacrifice at Amasea (modern Amasya, Turkey), but Theodore refused and confessed his faith in Jesus Christ. Emperor Diocletian’s Great Persecution was still in effect, and he faced execution for his belief. However, the judges took pity on his youth and delayed their sentence to give Theodore time to change his mind. Instead, Theodore used this time to burn the city’s temple to Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess. He was then arrested, tortured, and martyred by immolation.

Like St. George, Theodore is often depicted on horseback slaying a dragon; however, his horse is often brown instead of white. This Christianized iconography of the Thracian horseman is traced to the Cappadocia cave churches of Göreme. Tenth-century frescoes often show George and Theodore side by side.

St. Onesimus

Feast day: February 15

Onesimus is a second-century saint and was likely a slave to Philemon of Colossae; however, it is also possible that he is the same Onesimus named Bishop of Ephesus by Ignatius of Antioch.

Onesimus appears in the New Testament (Colossians 4 & Philemon), where he is named as a runaway slave. It is believed that he was attempting to escape the punishment of a theft of which he had been accused and found his way to the site of Paul’s imprisonment. After hearing the Gospel from Paul, he converted to Christianity and then wrote to Philemon attempting to reconcile the slave and his master.

If he was indeed named Bishop of Ephesus (it seems some scholars doubt this), then it is believed he was impressed in Rome and martyred by stoning during the persecutions of Emperors Domitian or Trajan.

St. Onuphrius

Feast day: June 12
Patron of: weavers & jurists

Onuphrius was a 4th or 5th-century hermit in the desert of Upper Egypt. He is considered one of the Desert Fathers who were inspired to live a life of prayer in the extreme heat and cold of the desert with little to eat and drink and surrounded by dangerous animals.

Tradition says that Onuphrius studied jurisprudence and philosophy before he became a monk and then a hermit. The pilgrim Paphnutius met Onuphrius in the desert, and the two spoke in the hermit’s cell until sunset when bread and water miraculously appeared. The two then spent the night in prayer. However, by morning, Onuphrius was near death; he blessed the pilgrim and then died. Paphnutius covered Onuphrius’s body in a cloak and placed it in a cleft of rocks since the ground was too hard to dig a grave.

St. Hypatius of Gangra

Feast day: November 14

The biography of Hypatius is short and mostly surrounds his death; although, it is noted that he was present at the First Ecumenical Council where he supported St. Athanasius against the Arian heresy.

In 326, Hypatius left Constantinople to travel to Gangra (present-day Çankırı, Turkey). On his way, he was attacked and thrown into a muddy swamp. The woman who struck the killing blow with a stone immediately went mad and began hitting herself with the same rock. She was healed when her companions later brought her to Hypatius’s tomb. Hypatius was found by some Christians of Gangra who buried him.

St. Barbara

Feast day: December 4
Patron of: armourers, miners, firemen, mathematicians, & chemical engineers

Barbara was born in third-century Heliopolis or Nicomedia and was the daughter of a rich pagan named Dioscorus who kept her locked in a tower to protect her from the outside world. She secretly became Christian and refused to marry the suitor her father had approved. When her father learned of her conversion, he had her dragged before the prefect of the province who had her tortured.

Yet, she refused to renounce her faith, and every night her dark cell was bathed in light, and in the morning, her wounds were healed. Finally, she was sentenced to death by beheading, and it was her father who carried out the act. As Dioscorus returned home after killing his daughter, he was struck by lightning and burned alive.

Sts. Sergius & Bacchus

Feast day: October 7
Patron of: Arabs, Arab Christians, & soldiers

Sergius and Bacchus were Roman citizens and high-ranking officers in the Roman army. However, when they tried to avoid entering a pagan temple with a Roman official, they were revealed as Christian. After continuing to refuse to sacrifice to Jupiter in the presence of Emperor Galerius, they were chained, dressed in women’s clothes, and paraded around town.

Following this humiliation, Sergius and Bacchus were sent to Barbalissos (in modern Syria) to be tried by Antiochus, an old friend of Sergius. Antiochus could not convince them to renounce their faith, and Bacchus was beaten to death. Sergius was also brutally tortured and after a few days, was finally executed at Resafa.

St. Polycarp

Feast day: February 23
Patron of: earache sufferers

Polycarp (born in 69 AD) was the Bishop of Smyrna, a disciple of St. John, and a friend of Ignatius of Antioch. Polycarp was recognized as a leader of the Church in Asia Minor, and he traveled to Rome to debate the date of Easter with Pope Anicetus.

Polycarp’s influence in Smyrna, however, angered the pagans there and demanded his death. Polycarp, at 86 years old, left the city and hid at a nearby farm, praying for his fellow Christians and the Church. Soon, however, he was found, and he gave himself up. After speaking with his captors and feeding them a meal, he asked for the opportunity to pray. They granted him two hours, during which Polycarp prayed for everyone he knew and the whole Church throughout the world.

He was then led into the arena in Smyrna. When he would not renounce his faith, the proconsul had him tied up to be burned alive. However, the fire flamed up in an arch around Polycarp, and instead of burning, he seemed to glow. His captors stabbed him, and Polycarp’s blood put out the fire.

Mammes of Caesarea

Feast Day: August 17
Patron of: babies who are breastfeeding & sufferers of broken bones

Born in 3rd century Caesarea (now Kayseri) to parents who had been jailed for being Christian, Mammes quickly became an orphan after his parents were executed. He was raised by a rich widow who died when Mammes was 15.

Despite a hard childhood, he kept his parents’ faith, which led to his torture by the governor of Caesarea. He was then tortured a second time by the Roman Emperor Aurelian. He escaped the emperor with the help of an angel, who hid him on a mountain near Caesarea. Yet, he was captured again and thrown to the lions. Miraculously, he preached to the lions, taming them. Duke Alexander sentenced him to death, and he was impaled by a trident.

St. Sabbas

Feast day: December 5

Sabbas, the son of a military commander, was born in 439 at Moutalaske, near Caesarea. When Sabbas was five, his parents traveled to Alexandria and left their son in the care of an uncle. At eight, Sabbas entered the nearby monastery of Flavian of Antioch. He quickly learned to read and became an expert on the scriptures. When he turned 17, Sabbas received the monastic tonsure and spent 10 years at the monastery.

Sabbas then traveled to Jerusalem to live at a strict cenobitic monastery under the rule of Abba Theoctistus. Theoctistus’s successor allowed Sabbas to seek solitude in a cave six days of the week; on Saturdays, he’d return to the monastery to participate in divine services. After Sabbas lived in the cave for five years, he gained the attention of St. Euthymius the Great, and they journeyed in the wilderness together.

When Euthymius died, Sabbas once again sought solitude, but he attracted disciples. Soon, their number grew so great that first one, then a second, and finally several more monasteries formed. He died in 532.

St. Marina (or St. Margaret of Antioch)

Feast day: July 20
Patron of: pregnant women & nurses

Marina, born in 289, was the daughter of a pagan priest. Her mother died during childbirth, and she was nursed by a Christian woman. When Marina was old enough, she became Christian and consecrated herself to God. Her father disowned her, but her nurse adopted her, and Marina lived in the country as a shepherdess. Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, asked to marry Marina, but when she refused, he had her cruelly tortured. She was decapitated in 304 at 15 years old.

After being away from the saints for a while, it was a bit hard to put myself back in the reflection mindset. What lesson do these ancient people offer me in a place and time so far removed from their own?

Eight out of nine of the Turkish saints were martyred. I know there are modern martyrs, but coming from the privilege of living in the US, dying for your faith is so far beyond my reality, that it’s hard not to look at martyrdom as part of Christianity’s tragic past. Yet, our travels were rife with stories of religious persecution from the Diocletianic Persecution (3,000-3,500 Christians killed) to the Greco-Turkish War (at least 3.5 million Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians killed and 1.5 million Muslims exiled or dead) and to the Nazi death camps in WWII (6 million Jews killed). There were more than these instances, of course, but these were the stories we were “closest” to in our exploration of history and culture.

What do you do with history like this, with knowledge like this? That was one of the biggest things Tim and I faced after visiting Auschwitz – now what? How do you carry horror (lived or learned) within you? What do you do with that?

drošs (adj) {Latvian}: brave, fearless, confident (not afraid, behaving freely, unconstrained); confident, sure certain; safe (not at risk, not exposed to danger, which protects, offers protection); safe, reliable (which can be trusted); (of thoughts, beliefs) safe, strong, confident

I think one of the only things you can do, at the end of the day, is be thankful. For the people who had to endure the persecution, thankful you survived. And for those who are the watchers and learners of history, like us, thankful that such an awful reality is not of our time. But in that, to have humility – recognizing that our good fortune does not and should not give us the right to place ourselves on a higher pedestal than those who suffer and are burdened by the world’s troubles. Give thanks for our safety and security, yes, but then use that to help others achieve the same thing.

For me, right now, this is all talk. I am using my good fortune, safety, and security to explore the world, discover who I want to be, to chase a happiness that lies outside the expectations of society. It may be a bit selfish to use my youth and privilege this way, but I’m hoping what I learn now will only help me be a better person so that later I can help others come to know how beautiful life can be.

*I do not claim rights to these photos.