Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit

Theodore was a young recruit ('tiron') in a legion stationed at Amasea in Pontus under the emperors Maximian and Maximinus. Ordered to sacrifice, he answered: 'I am a soldier of my King, Christ.' Given time to think it over, he set fire at night to the city's temple of the Mother of the Gods. He was tortured and burned alive, c. 306, and a pious woman named Eusebia buried his body at Euchaita.

His Life tells that some fifty years later, when Emperor Julian had food in the markets of Constantinople sprinkled with the blood of pagan sacrifices, Theodore appeared to Archbishop Eudoxius and told him to feed the people with boiled wheat and honey, koliva. The Church still blesses koliva in his memory on the first Saturday of Lent.