Our Holy Father the Martyr Romanus.

Commemorated February 16 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

Romanus was a simple and illiterate villager from Carpenesion. Leaming of the heroism and the glory of the martyrs of Christ, the young Romanus yearned for martyrdom himself. He went to Salonica, where he began to extol the Christian faith in the streets, and to call Mahomet a writer of fables. The Turks tortured him terribly, then handed him over to a galley-captain. Christians rescued him from the galley and sent him to the Holy Mountain, where Romanus became a monk under the famous Starets Acacius. But he still yearned for martyrdom for the sake of Christ. With the blessing of his starets, he went to Constantinople, pretended to be a fool and began to lead a dog about the streets. When asked why, Romanus replied that he fed that dog as Christians fed Turks. The Turks threw him into a dry well, where he lived without bread for forty days. They then took him out and executed him. Light streamed from his body for three days, after which an Englishman took it to England. But a monk soaked a towel in his blood, and that towel is kept to this day in the monastery of Docheiariou. This glorious soldier of Christ suffered in 1694.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK