January 31st/February 13th. Martyrs Cyrus and John.

The Martyr Cyrus was a native, student, and renowned physician of Alexandria. Visiting the sick, he treated them free of charge, for which he was called an unmercenary (бесребреник), and through this he brought many of them to Christ. During the persecution under Diocletian, Cyrus withdrew to the Arabian desert, where he continued to miraculously heal bodily and spiritual illnesses through prayer and word. The fame of Cyrus’s miracles attracted the soldier John, who settled with him, striving in everything to imitate him, and John, like Cyrus, was also called an unmercenary. Hearing that in Egypt, in the city of Canopus, pagans had seized the Christian woman Athanasia along with her three young daughters—Theoctiste, 15 years old; Theodote, 13 years old; and Eudoxia, 11 years old—and fearing that Athanasia might renounce the faith at the sight of her daughters’ suffering—Cyrus and John came to Canopus. The governor of the city, learning of them, seized them and, in the presence of Athanasia and her daughters, terribly tortured them and then beheaded them. But this did not frighten the confessors of the Christian faith; they endured all the tortures and were then also beheaded by the sword. This took place in 311. On June 28 is celebrated the translation of the relics of the holy unmercenaries from Canopus to the village of Manuphin, near it, in 412.

The martyrs Iuctorinus (or Victorinus), Victor, Nicephorus, Claudius, Diodorus, Serapion, and Papias suffered during the persecution of Decius, in Diospolis (in Egypt), in 251. Iuctorinus, Victor, and Nicephorus were pounded to death in a stone mortar; Claudius had his hands and feet cut off; Diodorus was burned; Serapion was beheaded; and Papias was drowned.

The Martyr Tryphaena of Cyzicus was born in the city of Cyzicus, near the Hellespont, to Christian parents. Desiring to receive a martyr’s end, she herself appeared before the pagan torturers, began to rebuke them for their pagan impiety, and to preach about Christ. Enraged, the pagans first threw her into a red-hot furnace, but she remained unharmed; then they gave her to wild beasts to be devoured, but the beasts did not touch her; then they hung her on a tall tree and threw her down from there, but the Lord preserved her even here. Finally, when it pleased God to call her pure soul to Himself, the holy great martyr was thrown to a raging bull and torn apart by it.

Saint Nikita, Bishop of Novgorod, wonderworker, was at first a recluse and monk of the Kiev Caves. Having been elevated to Bishop of Novgorod, he pastored the Church of Novgorod for 13 years and was glorified even during his lifetime with the gift of miracles. At the beginning of his ascetic labors, when he withdrew into reclusion with the aim of gaining fame, he was deceived by the devil. The devil appeared to him in the form of an angel and said: “Do not pray, but only read and teach others, and I will pray in your place.” The holy ascetics, his contemporaries, came to him, instructed him, and by their prayers drove away the devil and brought him out of reclusion. Saint Nikita reposed in 1108. His relics were uncovered in 1558 and rest openly in the Sophia Cathedral of the Novgorod Kremlin. A particular feature of the miracles of Saint Nikita is that those suffering from eye diseases receive healing from him; during a city fire, at the saint’s prayer, rain came and extinguished the blaze, so people turn to him in prayer also for deliverance from fires.