Commemorated today
- Martyr Basiliscus, Bishop of ComanaMartyr
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.
The title places them at Comana.
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.
- Righteous Melchizedek, king of Salem.Righteous
What is known
The righteous are lay men and women commemorated for holiness in ordinary life rather than for martyrdom or monastic vows.
The title places them at Salem.
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.
- Commemoration of the Second Ecumenical Council (381).A synaxis — several kept together · 381
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.
The year given is 381.
What is kept is the council and what it settled, rather than the life of any one of the fathers who sat at it.
- Holy New Martyrs Demetrius and Paul of TripoliNew 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 Tripoli. 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.
- John-Vladimir, Ruler of Serbia
What is known
The title places them at Serbia.
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 May 22 by the civil calendar. On the Julian calendar this same commemoration is kept on June 4 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.