Hieromartyr Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons — August 23 / September 5 (Julian Calendar)

On this day, August 23 according to the Julian Calendar (September 5 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates the Hieromartyr Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons. The Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons was born in the year 130 in the city of Smyrna. There he received a brilliant education, mastering poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, and the other sciences. He was instructed in the truths of Christian teaching by the hierarch Polycarp of Smyrna (commemorated February 23), a disciple of the Apostle John the Theologian. Polycarp himself baptized the young man, ordained him a priest, and sent him to the city of Lugdunum in Gaul (present-day Lyons in France), to the aged hierarch Pothinus.

Soon Irenaeus was entrusted with a responsible mission: the confessors sent an epistle by his hand to Eleutherius, Pope of Rome (177–190). In the saint’s absence all the prominent Christians of the city were thrown into prison. In the year 178, one year after the martyric end of Bishop Pothinus, the blessed Irenaeus was consecrated Bishop of Lugdunum. “In a short time,” the hierarch Gregory of Tours wrote of the saint, “by his preaching he turned all of Lugdunum into a Christian city!”

During the reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus (193–211), in the year 202, the hierarch Irenaeus was beheaded for his confession of the true faith.