Saint Cyprian was a pagan and a native of Antioch. From his early childhood his misguided parents dedicated him to the service of the pagan gods. From the age seven until he was thirty, Cyprian studied at the leading centers of paganism: on Mount Olympus; in the cities of Argos and Tauropolis; in…

Blessed Andrew, Fool-for-Christ, was a Slav and lived in the tenth century at Constantinople. From his early years, he loved God’s Church and the Holy Scriptures. Once during a dream, the saint beheld a vision of two armies. In the one were men in radiant garb, in the other, black and…

The Holy Right-believing Princess Anna of Kashin, a daughter of the Rostov prince Demetrius Borisovich, in 1294 became the wife of the holy Great Prince Michael Yaroslavich of Tver, who was murdered by the Mongol-Tatars of the Horde in 1318, (November 22). After the death of her husband, Anna…

Saint Cassian the Greek of Uglich, in the world Constantine, was a descendant of the Greek Mangupa princes. He arrived in Moscow as part of the delegation to Great Prince Ivan III, together with the daughter of the Byzantine emperor, Sophia Paleologa. Having decided to devote his life to the…

The 8th century was extremely difficult for the Georgian people. Marwan bin Muhammad (called “the Deaf” by the Georgians and “the Blind” by the Armenians), the Persian ruler and military leader for the Arab caliph, invaded eastern parts of the Byzantine Empire, then Armenia…

Saint Theodore, one of Russia’s greatest naval heroes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was born in 1745. The unvanquished Admiral was the terror of his country’s enemies, and the deliverer of those whom the barbarians had taken captive. He served during the Russo-Turkish War…