Ss. Menas, Hermogenes and Eugraphus

Menas, called Kallikelados, "the fair-voiced", for his eloquence, was an Athenian of a pagan family who came to the faith by reading the Scriptures and the lives of the saints, and was baptized. Not knowing it, the emperor Maximinus sent him to govern Alexandria, and when the order came to persecute, Menas not only refused it but brought many to Christ. Maximinus sent Hermogenes to replace him. Hermogenes had Menas tortured and left in prison to die, and finding him alive and healed, believed, was baptized by him, and was afterwards made a bishop. Then both confessed Christ before the emperor himself, with Eugraphus, Menas’s secretary, and all three were put to death, about 313. This is not the Great Martyr Menas of 11 November. Feast: December 10.