When a persecution against Christians broke out in Isauria, one of the first to suffer was Saint Conon. He was subjected to fierce torments for his refusal to offer sacrifice to idols.
Saint James the Faster lived a life of asceticism near the Phoenician city of Porphyrion in the sixth century.
Describing the burial of Prince Basil, the chronicler said: “The multitude of Orthodox people wept bitterly, when they saw the departed father and nourisher of orphans, the great comforter of the sorrowful, and... the setting of a luminous star.... By his martyr’s blood his transgressions and those of his brethren were washed away.”
The Holy Hieromartyrs Joasaph of Snetogorsk and Basil of Mirozh suffered under the Germans at two of the most ancient of the Pskov monasteries during the thirteenth century.
Envious nobles decided to murder the saint and, at first, to incite his mother against him, and later to urge his younger brother, Boleslav, to occupy the princely throne.
