The holy Martyr Theodore

Commemorated on January 30

The holy Martyr Theodore was born in the city of Mytilene, where he married and raised children in Orthodox piety. Through the sufferance of God he renounced Christ and accepted Mahometanism, but soon repented himself, left his family and went off to Athos. But even in the monastery Saint Theodore was deeply anguished by his renunciation. The Lord blessed the saint in a confession of Orthodoxy afront a Mahometan judge in the year 1784. The enraged judge gave orders to fiercely torture the holy martyr, and then they strangled him with a rope and cast him into the sea. Christians buried the body of the holy Martyr Theodore in a church named for Saint John the Forerunner.