Hieromartyr Theodotus the Bishop of Ancyra

On this day the Church remembers Theodotus of Ancyra in Galatia, who died c. 303 under Diocletian. Calendars call him both a bishop and «the innkeeper»; whether he is the same man as Theodotus the innkeeper of Ancyra, remembered on 18 May, is uncertain.

The Life of the innkeeper, written by one Nilus, tells that Theodotus kept an inn to shelter persecuted Christians and to supply bread and wine for the Eucharist when all food in the market was sprinkled with sacrificial blood. When seven aged virgins, one of them his aunt Tecusa, were drowned in a lake, he and his friends recovered their bodies at night and buried them. For this he was tortured and beheaded; a priest named Fronto took his body to the village of Malos.