Hieromartyr Autonomus, Bishop in Italy (+313)
The Hieromartyr Autonomus was a bishop in Italy. During the persecution of the Christians by the Emperor Diocletian (284–305) he left his country and settled in Bithynia, at a place called Soreoi, with Cornelius, who was known for his hospitality, and there continued to preach the word of God. Soon the blessed one built a church in the name of the Archangel Michael, where he first appointed Cornelius a deacon and then ordained him priest. At this time Autonomus also went round Lycaonia and Isauria with the teaching of the Gospel.
When Diocletian came to Nicomedia, he ordered the holy hierarch to be seized, but he again escaped the wrath of the godless ruler and took refuge by the Black Sea, in the city of Claudiopolis. After returning to Soreoi, Autonomus consecrated Cornelius bishop, and himself set out for Asia. Later he came to the village of Limnae near Soreoi. Here the former pagans converted to Christianity by Saint Autonomus’s preaching “fell upon the temple of the idols”, smashed the idols, “cast them into the earth and the dust, and showed their servants the impotence of the things they served”. The idol-worshippers resolved to take vengeance on the Christians: they chose a time when the hierarch Autonomus was offering the bloodless sacrifice, burst into the church armed with swords and staves, scattered the congregation, and after torturing the holy father slew him with the sword at the altar: “they shed his blood upon the holy table, as that of the prophet Zacharias of old, which cried unto God more than the blood of Abel shed without cause”. The deaconess Maria and other believers reverently committed the hieromartyr’s precious remains to the earth.
In the reign of Constantine the Great (306–337) a church was built over Saint Autonomus’s tomb. Around the year 430 a certain hierarch had the damaged church pulled down entirely and moved to another place. Sixty years later, by a miraculous sign, the saint’s incorrupt relics were revealed and brought up, and a church in his name was built as well.
