saint
Martyrs Florus and Laurus of Illyria
Twin stonemasons of Illyria who were contracted to build a pagan temple, turned its doors instead toward the East and consecrated it in the name of Christ, and were cast into a dry well for their confession.
Martyrs Florus and Laurus — Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Life
Florus and Laurus were twin brothers of the second century, born in Byzantium and trained from their youth as stonemasons. They were skilled in the craft and were eventually commissioned, along with a team of workmen, to travel into Illyria to build a great pagan temple for the local prince. When the prince's son fell ill and died in their presence — by an accident that the synaxarion connects to the temple construction — the twins took the opportunity to declare themselves Christians and to convert the workmen with them.
Together they then transformed the temple they had been building: they finished the construction not as a temple of the gods but as a church of Christ, dedicating it with prayer and setting in it a cross. The local prince, learning what had been done, ordered them and all the workmen arrested. Florus and Laurus were thrown alive into a deep dry well outside the town and the well was filled with earth above them; the other workmen were beheaded.
The bodies of the twins were rediscovered in the fourth century, when the well was opened and their relics found incorrupt. They were translated to Constantinople with great honor. Their joint feast falls on August 18.
Traditions
Feast day
August 18
Topics
Works in library