The Holy Great Martyr James the Persian (the Sawn-Asunder) was born in the fourth century into a pious Christian family, both wealthy and illustrious. His wife was also a Christian, and the couple raised their children in piety, inspiring in them a love for prayer and the Holy Scriptures. James…

Born in Thessaloniki, he contended in asceticism in Alexandria at the end of the VI and the beginning of the VII century. His Service is sung at Compline. This Saint should not be confused with the fourth century Saint Palladius of Galatia (January 28), the author of the Lausiac History, which…

According to a local tradition, Saint James received monastic tonsure at Kopyrsk monastery on the River Ukhtoma, 80 kilometers from Rostov. For a long time he was igumen of this monastery, and in the year 1385 he was made Bishop of Rostov when Pimen was Metropolitan and Demetrius of the Don was…

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These Christian monks are mentioned in The Lives of Saints Barlaam and Ioasaph (November 19), by Saint John of Damascus (December 4). They suffered in the IV century when King Abenner ruled India. He hated Christians because they were converting his people to Christ, and some of them even became…

Saint Romanós was from the city of Rosón in Cilicia, but he spent his anchoritic life in strict fasting in a cave near Antioch during the V century. There, at the foot of a mountain, he built a small cell, in which he struggled as an ascetic. He wore heavy chains under his hair shirt, and for…

Saint Diodoros (Diódoros) of Yuriegorsk, George Hill (Георгиевского холма) was born in the village of Turchasovo on the Onega River, half-way between Archangelsk and Kargopol. His parents, Hierotheos and Maria, named their son Diomedes. When he was fifteen years old he went on a…

The Icon of the Mother of God “Of the Sign”, depicts the Most Holy Theotokos with prayerfully uplifted hands, and the Divine Infant is at Her bosom in a mandorla (or sphere). This depiction of the Mother of God is regarded as one of the very first of Her iconographic images. In the…

The Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God “Of the Sign” is one of the most ancient icons of the Russian Church. In the thirteenth century during the Tatar invasion, when all the Russian realm was put to the extremest tribulation, the city of Kursk, ravaged by the Horde of Batu, fell into…

The Abalaka Icon of the Mother of God “Of the Sign” was painted by Matthew, a protodeacon of the Tobolsk cathedral, in honor of Sophia (the Wisdom of God), in fulfillment of a vow by a paralytic peasant Euthymius to rebuild the church at the Abalaka monastery of the Mother of God…

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The Tsarskoe Selo Sign Icon of the Mother of God an ancient wonderworking icon, was brought by way of a present to Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich by one of the Eastern Patriarchs, supposedly by Saint Athanasius of Constantinople (October 28). Tsar Peter I transferred the icon, together with other sacred…

The Seraphim-Ponetaevka Icon of the Mother of God “of the Sign” was painted in the year 1879 by the nuns of the Seraphim-Ponetaevka women’s monastery, not far from Arzamas, near the village of Ponetaevka. The monastery was named after Saint Seraphim of Sarov by the founder of the…