saint

Helladius the Hieromartyr

Bishop in the East who in Diocletian's persecution was scourged and burned for refusing to deny Christ; his constancy in suffering is the chief record history preserves of him.

Life

Helladius was a bishop of one of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire — the synaxaria differ on the specific see, but Phoenicia, Caria, and the Pontic region are all named in the various local traditions — who suffered martyrdom in one of the great waves of persecution of the late third or early fourth century. The synaxarion preserves only a brief account: that he was arrested for the open confession of Christ, refused to surrender the sacred vessels or the church's books, endured the rack and the iron claws, and was finally cast into a great fire from which his soul was carried up to heaven.

The lack of biographical detail places him among those holy martyrs whose names the Church remembers without the surrounding circumstances — figures whose witness was preserved in the local liturgical traditions of their churches even when the details of their lives were lost in the violence of the persecutions themselves. His feast falls on May 27.

3rd century

Traditions

Eastern Orthodox

Feast day

May 27

Topics

Martyrdom

Works in library

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