Dr. John (Ellsworth) Hutchison-Hall

Eastern Orthodox Christian theologian, historian, philosopher, and cultural commentator.

            

Orthodox Saints of the Pre-Schism See of Rome

ALEXANDER of BERGAMO, the details of his life are uncertain, though there is a legend that he was a member of the Theban Legion (22nd September) who escaped (several times), spending the last few years of his life in Bergamo (northern Italy), preaching and evangelising, before he was finally arrested and martyred in 303 at the location where the church of San Alessandro in Colonna on the Via Sant'Alessandro in Bergamo now stands.

ELIAS of SYRACUSE, a Bishop of Syracuse in Sicily, who reposed in 660, and of whom no further information seems to be known.

FELIX of PISTOIA, a ninth century hermit in Pistoia in Tuscany (central Italy). No other details of his life are extant.

IRENAEUS of ROME and ABUNDIUS the MARTYR, martyred in Rome circa 258, for the crime of giving proper burials to Christians, they were drowned in the public sewers during the Valerian Persecution.

PANDWYNA (PANDONIA, PANDIONIA), a native of either Scotland or Ireland, St. Pandwyna was forced to flee to England, where it is believed that a relative was Prioress of Eltisley Priory, Cambridgeshire (about 9 km / 5.5 mi east of St. Neots). There she received monastic tonsure and spent the rest of her life as a nun. St. Pandwyna reposed circa 904, and was initially buried near St. Pandonia's Well in Eltisley. Her relics were later translated to the village church, St. Pandionia & St. John the Baptist.

RUFINUS of CAPUA, a fifth century Bishop of Capua in present-day Italy. His relics are enshrined in Cattedrale dei SS. Stefano e Agata in Capua.

SECUNDUS the THEBAN, (Third Century), a general of the Theban Legion (22nd September) who was martyred at Ventimiglia in Liguria (northern Italy).

VICTOR (VITORES) the MARTYR, a hermit in Spain, who commanded by an angel to preach the Gospel to the Moors besieging his native town of Cereza. Though he had some initial success, St. Victor was ultimately martyred by crucifixion at the hands of the Moors in 950. However, the Moors did abandon their siege.

ZEPHYRINUS, Pope of Rome from 199 until his repose in 217. In addition to helping his flock to endure the persecutions under the Emperor Septimius Severus (r. 193–211), St. Zephyrinus also had to shepherd the Church through the adversities brought upon it by various heresies of the day, including Montanism and Sabellianism, and that of Marcion of Sinope.

Prior to the Schism the Patriarchate of Rome was Orthodox, and fully in communion with the Orthodox Church. As Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco +1966 said “The West was Orthodox for a thousand years, and her venerable Liturgy is far older than any of her heresies”.

Details of British Saints excerpted from Orthodox Saints of the British Isles.
Details of continental saints from these sources.

In many cases there are several spelling versions of the names of saints from the British Isles. I use the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography version as the primary version with the more prevalent version in parenthesis e.g. Ceadda (Chad) of Lichfield.