Great-martyr Procopius of Caesarea

Procopius was a Roman officer of the late third century, born at Jerusalem and serving under Diocletian in Alexandria. By his own account, he was on the road from Alexandria to Antioch — bearing imperial orders to seize Christians wherever he found them — when he was met by a vision of a cross of light in the sky, accompanied by a voice that named him Procopius and called him from his persecution. He returned to Jerusalem, was instructed in the faith, baptized, and at his own choice came forward to the proconsul Flavian to confess Christ openly.

He endured an extraordinary series of torments over a long period — by the synaxarion's account, several years of intermittent torture during which he was repeatedly tested with the offer of high imperial command if he would recant. His mother Theodosia, initially horrified at his apostasy from the imperial service, was herself converted through the witness of his constancy and was martyred before him. Procopius was finally beheaded at Caesarea in Palestine around 303.

A great basilica was raised over his tomb, and his shrine became one of the principal sites of pilgrimage in Palestine in the Byzantine era. His feast is kept on July 8.