Theodotus, Bishop of Cyrene

Theodotus was bishop of Cyrene in Cyrenaica — the principal city of the Greek-speaking Pentapolis on the North African coast — in the early fourth century. He was a man of immense pastoral energy and biblical learning, who governed his small Christian community through the last persecutions of the Eastern empire under the Emperor Licinius (308–324).

When Licinius ordered the universal renewal of pagan sacrifice in 320, Theodotus was arrested by the local governor Sabinus, who attempted by the standard sequence of torments to compel him to recant. The synaxarion records that the bishop, throughout the torments, continued to teach and to make converts among the spectators — including, most strikingly, Sabinus himself, who by the bishop's prayers and counsel was led to a profession of the Christian faith and to a quiet repentance for the torments he had inflicted.

Theodotus was finally beheaded outside the city, around 320, after the governor's conversion (which was kept secret to spare Sabinus the same fate). His feast falls on March 2.