Great Martyr Menas of Egypt

Menas was an Egyptian soldier serving at Cotyaeum in Phrygia under the commander Firmilian, in the time of Diocletian and Maximian. He left the army and withdrew to the mountains. When pagan games were held in the town, he came forward and declared that he was a Christian. The governor Pyrrus had him tortured: he was hung up and scraped with iron claws and dragged over spikes.

He was sentenced to be beheaded, and his body to be burned. According to his Life, some believers gathered what remained of the relics and later took them to Egypt, near Alexandria, where a church was built over them. Menas became one of the most widely venerated martyrs of the Christian East, and his shrine near Alexandria was long a place of pilgrimage.