Holy Martyr Orestes the Physician (+304)

The holy Martyr Orestes lived in the Cappadocian city of Tyana at the end of the third century, in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. He was a skilled physician.

By order of the lawless emperor the commander Maximinus was sent to the city of Tyana to fight Christianity. Orestes was one of the first to stand before his court. At Maximinus’s command the saint was brought into a rich pagan temple and ordered to worship the idols. The Lord’s chosen one refused, for which cruel torments were brought down upon him: forty soldiers took turns beating him with rods and ox sinews, and then they began to torture him with fire. Saint Orestes prayed: “Lord, shew me a token for good; that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed.” Suddenly the earth shook, and the idols fell down and were shattered. The frightened people fled from the heathen temple. When Saint Orestes left the place, the temple collapsed.

The furious Maximinus ordered the holy martyr to be locked in prison for a week without food or drink, and on the eighth day to be brought out again for torture. Nails were driven into the blessed one’s heels, and then he was tied to an untamed horse and dragged along the ground. In such torment the Lord’s chosen one gave up his spirit in 304. His tortured body was thrown into the sea.

Many centuries passed after this. Once, in 1685, Demetrius, a monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra (later Metropolitan of Rostov, commemorated 28 October), who was copying the Life of Saint Orestes from an old manuscript, dozed off from weariness. In a vision in his sleep the holy martyr stood before him, showed him a deep wound in his breast, the sinews cut at the elbows and the shattered shins, and told him to complete his Life, since the torments he had endured were not fully described in the manuscripts. The humble monk joyfully carried out Saint Orestes’s command.