Encomium on Theodore the Martyr

Contents

1. 735Gregory greets the crowds who have gathered in winter for the feast of the soldier-martyr Theodore, who has summoned them like a trumpeter.
2. 737Theodore, believed to have turned back the Scythians the year before, is honoured in a splendid shrine whose carvings and paintings tell his story; the bodies of martyrs are honoured as other remains are not.
3. 739Pilgrims touch the martyr’s tomb and relics and ask his intercession, showing that the death of the saints is precious to God; Gregory turns to Theodore’s own story, an eastern-born recruit.
4. 741Theodore, wintering with his unit in Pontus during the persecution, confesses Christ before the governor and commander, rejects the gods as demons, and answers a mocking officer about the Son of God.
5. 743Given time to reconsider, Theodore burns the temple of the mother of the gods at Amasea, confesses it openly, and laughs at the offer of a pagan high priesthood, mocking the emperors who take the title of high priest.
6. 745Theodore is tortured on the rack while singing a psalm, is heard with a heavenly choir in prison, and is burned; his shrine has become a place of healing and pilgrimage, and Gregory calls on him to come to his feast.
7. 747Gregory asks Theodore to intercede for his country against the threatening Scythians and, with the martyrs and apostles, to guard the churches from idolatry and heresy.