Martyr Neophytus of Nicæa

Neophytus was born in Nicaea in Bithynia to Christian parents, Theodulus and Florentia. His Life tells that as a schoolboy he gave his lunch to poorer classmates every day and drew water for them from a stone in the city wall. As a boy he went to live in a cave on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, which, the Life says, he took over from a lion that left it at his word.

During the persecution of Diocletian he returned to Nicaea and confessed himself a Christian before the governor. According to his Life, he was tortured and thrown into a furnace, and when a lion was let loose on him in the arena, it was the same lion from the cave, which only licked his feet and went back to the mountain. A soldier then killed him with a spear. He was fifteen years and four months old.