Lives of the Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Lives of the Saints’
St Gregory Palamas struggled all his life to stand up for the principle that the Bible means what it says.
St Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), Archbishop of Thessalonica, is reckoned (alongside St Photius and St Mark of Ephesus) one of the three Pillars of Orthodoxy; the second Sunday of Lent is dedicated to him. His life was a unrelenting struggle against slander, brought about by his utter conviction that those passages in the Bible which speak of angels or heavenly lights being seen by men actually mean what they say.
Heathen prince Boris I of Bulgaria (r. 852–889) commissioned St Methodius to paint an impressive scene for his palace walls.
St Methodius (815-885) and his younger brother St Cyril (826-869) were Slavs from Thessalonica who brought the Christian gospel to Eastern Europe. In 864, Boris I, King of the Bulgarians (r. 852-889), abandoned his heathen beliefs and was baptised, and according to 11th-century Byzantine chronicler John Skylitzes, Methodius was behind Boris’s change of heart.
George served in the Roman army and lies buried in Israel, yet he makes an ideal patron for England.
It is sometimes said that England’s patron saint, St George, is not very English. Yet Britain in his day was part of the Roman Empire, and George refused to help the Roman Emperor send troops against his own people, meddle with the Church or impose cruel and arbitrary punishments — all key provisions of The Great Charter of 1215. You can’t get more English than that.
Maximian and his friends refused to take part in a multi-faith day of prayer for unity.
In the days of the Roman Emperor Theodosius (r. 402-450) doubts were again being raised about the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of bodies. Just at that moment, a letter came to the Imperial court in Constantinople from nearby Ephesus, where the Bishop had seen with his own eyes a quite extraordinary tale of life after death.
According to legend, when the Venetians tried to kidnap it the Holy Table of St Sophia in Constantinople made a dramatic escape.
In 1204, Crusaders sacked and desecrated Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire and most honoured See of the Greek Orthodox Church. For almost sixty years thereafter, the communion Table in the grand basilica of Holy Wisdom (Agia Sophia) suffered itself to be used for Roman Catholic services, but in 1261 the retreating Latins tried to carry it away with them to Italy, and enough was enough.
The young Christian from ancient Northumbria was healed of a lame leg in a manner that reminded Bede of the archangel Rafael.
As a small boy, Cuthbert had been approached at playtime by a toddler who told him in the most grown-up fashion to cultivate mind as well as body. Some years later, though long before he became a monk, another unearthly visitor came by.