✝ the Holy Martyr Eusignius
August 5 / August 18 (Julian Calendar)
On this day, August 5 according to the Julian Calendar (August 18 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Martyr Eusignius of Antioch.
Saint Eusignius the Martyr was born in Antioch in the middle of the third century. For six decades he served in the armies of the Roman emperors Diocletian, Maximian Herculius, Constantius Chlorus, Constantine the Great, and the sons of Constantine. At the beginning of the reign of Constantine the Great (306–337), Eusignius beheld with his own eyes the radiant appearance of the Cross in the heavens, the herald of victory.
In his old age the saint left military service and returned to his homeland, where he passed his days in prayer and fasting. In the meantime Julian the Apostate (361–363) ascended the throne, who strove to restore the pagan religion throughout the empire. Denounced by a certain man of Antioch, Saint Eusignius was seized and brought before the emperor’s tribunal for confessing Christ.
The blessed one fearlessly reproached the wrathful autocrat for his denial of the Savior. He set before him the example of the emperor’s own kinsman, Constantine the Great, and, as an eyewitness, recounted in detail the miraculous appearance of the sign of the Cross in the sky. Julian then ordered that the head of the hundred-year-old elder be struck off (†362).
May the intercessions of the Holy Martyr Eusignius be with us all.