Doxology. Kept with the Great Doxology.
Fast day — no meat; dairy and eggs are allowed.
Commemorated today
- Translation of the relics of Protomartyr StephenTranslation of relics
What is known
A translation is the moving of a saint's relics from one resting place to another, often into a church built for them. The Church keeps the day of the move as well as the day of the death.
What is kept today is this event in particular rather than the whole life behind it, and of that life no account survives here that could be checked.
- Blessed Vasily, Fool-for-ChristFool for Christ
What is known
A fool for Christ took on the appearance of madness on purpose, to refuse the honour the world pays to piety and to say things nobody else could say safely. It is a rare and deliberately unsettling vocation, and the Church has always treated it cautiously.
Beyond this, no life of them survives that could be checked — which is true of most of the saints kept on any given day. The commemoration is the record.
- Hieromartyr Stephen, Pope of Rome (257), and those with himHieromartyr — a bishop or priest killed for the faith · d. 257
What is known
A hieromartyr was a bishop, priest or deacon killed for the faith. The clergy were often taken first in a persecution, because removing them scattered the community that depended on them.
The title places them at Rome. The year given is 257.
They are kept together rather than separately, and for most of them the number, the place and the manner of death are the whole of what is recorded.
- Holy Glorious New Martyr Theodore of DardanellesNew Martyr — killed under Ottoman or modern persecution
What is known
A new martyr died in one of the later persecutions rather than the Roman ones — most often under Ottoman rule, or in the twentieth century under Soviet and other modern regimes. The word new distinguishes the era, not the manner.
The title places them at Dardanelles. Kept in the Greek tradition.
Beyond this, no life of them survives that could be checked — which is true of most of the saints kept on any given day. The commemoration is the record.
- Phocas the MartyrMartyr
What is known
A martyr died rather than deny Christ. The word is Greek for witness, and the Church uses it in that sense: the death is testimony, not merely a fate. Most of these deaths fall in the Roman persecutions before 313, though the title is not restricted to them.
Kept in the Greek tradition.
Beyond this, no life of them survives that could be checked — which is true of most of the saints kept on any given day. The commemoration is the record.
- Plegmund, Archbishop of CanterburyHierarch
What is known
A hierarch is a bishop — including patriarchs, metropolitans and archbishops. The Church commemorates bishops in this rank whether they are remembered chiefly for teaching, for governing, or for holding a see through a difficult century.
The title places them at Canterbury. Kept in the Greek tradition.
Beyond this, no life of them survives that could be checked — which is true of most of the saints kept on any given day. The commemoration is the record.
About this page. This is the Menaion date — the fixed calendar. Parishes on the New Calendar keep it on August 2 by the civil calendar. On the Julian calendar this same commemoration is kept on August 15 by the civil calendar. The movable cycle, which turns on the date of Pascha and changes every year, is on the calendar page. Where a life has been written on this site the name links to it; where it has not, only what the commemoration itself attests is shown, and nothing is added to it.