Commemoration. A commemoration with its own hymns at Vespers.
Commemorated today
- Righteous Simeon the Godbearer and Anna the ProphetessRighteous
What is known
The righteous are lay men and women commemorated for holiness in ordinary life rather than for martyrdom or monastic vows.
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.
- Our Father among the Saints, Nikolai (Nicholas), Archbishop and Enlightener of Japan (1912)Hierarch · d. 1912 life on this site
The life we have written
Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Nicholas of Japan
A Russian monk spent half a century helping Japanese Christians build a Japanese Orthodox Church, translating its worship with exacting care and refusing to let war turn their communion in Christ into an instrument of nationalism.
- Era
- 1836–1912
- Region
- Russia and Japan
- Category
- Missionary, translator, archbishop, and Equal-to-the-Apostles
- Feast
- February 3 (February 16 civil date in jurisdictions following the Julian calendar)
- Stamatios, John, & Nicholas, New Martyrs of SpetsesNew 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 Spetses. 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.
- Synaxis of the Most Holy TheotokosA synaxis — several kept together
What is known
A synaxis is an assembly: a day on which a group is kept together rather than one by one. It often falls the day after a great feast, honouring those who stood closest to it.
Kept in the Greek tradition.
A synaxis is an assembly: a day that gathers a group together, or that honours those who stood closest to a feast kept the day before. What survives of each of them varies, and for most it is very little.
- Ansgar of Hamburg-Bremen
What is known
The title places them at Hamburg-Bremen. 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.
Appointed readings
About this page. This is the Menaion date — the fixed calendar. Parishes on the New Calendar keep it on February 3 by the civil calendar. On the Julian calendar this same commemoration is kept on February 16 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.