THEODORE TIRON

The Great Father of the Church, Saint Gregory of Nyssa (335–394), who was the brother of Basil the Great, dedicated a eulogy to the holy great martyr Theodorus. The greatest hymnographer of the Orthodox tradition, Saint John of Damascus (675–749), dedicated a special prayer canon to him. For refusing to sacrifice to the gods and destroying the statue of the pagan goddess Cybele, the “mother of the gods,” Theodore was burned alive. His relics were supernaturally transferred to the place where, just a couple of decades later, Constantine the Great founded Constantinople.

“Come out and depart from the sealed newly elected soldier of Christ our God,” says the first invocation prayer of the Orthodox rite of catechumens. Constantine the Great founded Constantinople, the future capital of the ancient Orthodox world.

“Come forth and depart from the sealed, newly-enlisted soldier of Christ, our God,” reads the first invocation of the Orthodox rite of the Making of a Catechumen. Named Tyron, which literally means “new recruit,” because he chose Christ’s heavenly host over the pagan obedience of the earthly Roman army, the martyr inspired not only strangers but also his close relatives to bear witness to the faith, which is very rare even for prophets and saints. Thus, the martyr Basiliscus of Comana was Theodore’s nephew, and it was he who, a hundred years after his martyrdom, appeared to John Chrysostom at the site of his final exile on the eve of his death and called him to heavenly glory.

Until 828, when the relics of the Apostle Mark were “transferred” from Alexandria to Venice, Saint Theodore Tyron was the principal heavenly patron of that city. To this day, a column dedicated to Saint Theodore stands in the square near St. Mark’s Basilica, on which on which he tramples a dragon resembling a crocodile. In ancient Roman symbolism—preserved, for example, in the coat of arms of the French city of Nîmes, a former Roman military colony in Gaul—the crocodile was a symbol of Egypt. The Venetians “took” Saint Mark from Egypt, which had become a different faith. Venice at that time, in the eighth and ninth centuries, was formally under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium—that is, an Orthodox state with its capital in Constantinople.

For a thousand years, right up until 1797, Venice was a free state, and for centuries even the sole colonial empire under whose rule Corfu and other Orthodox Greek islands remained after the fall of Constantinople, under the patronage of Saints Mark, Theodore, Spyridon of Trimythous, and many others. A proverb has survived in Venice to this day: “To be between Mark and Theodore.” The fact is that between Theodore’s Column and St. Mark’s Basilica there was a place where the death sentence was carried out on the condemned. Thus, just as the heavenly apparition of St. Theodore is celebrated on the first Saturday of Great Lent, the stern and fateful visage of the divine recruit Theodore appears before the faithful. The saints are our friends when we honor them, call upon their help, and draw inspiration from their deeds. When their memory fades, they can be formidable.