Saint Spyridon the Wonderworker, Bishop of Tremithus

Spyridon was a married shepherd of Cyprus, with children, who was chosen bishop of Trimythous, a small town near Salamis, and went on tending his sheep after his consecration. The Roman Martyrology counts him among the confessors maimed and sent to the mines in the persecution of the early 4th century.

Tradition places him at the Council of Nicaea in 325, where, according to his Life, he squeezed a clay brick that gave off fire and water while clay remained in his hand, to show how three can be one. He died about 348. His relics were taken to Constantinople and, after its fall, to Corfu in 1456, where they remain; he is the island’s patron.