Saint Menas Kallikelados November 11

 Saint Menas Kallikelados

Also known as

• Aba Mina

• Menas of Egypt

• Menas of Constantinople

• Menas of Cotyaes

• Menas of Cotyaeum

• Menas of Kotyaeum

• Menas of Mareotis

• Menas the Martyr

• Menas the Miracle Maker

• Menas the Miracle Worker

• Menas the Soldier

• Menas the Wonder Worker

• Mena, Mennas, Mina, Minas

Profile

May have been a camel driver in civilian life. Soldier in the imperial Roman army, serving under Firmilian. During the anti-Christian persecutions of Diocletian and Maximian, Menas left the army for his own safety, and so he would not in any way support such a regime. He retired for a while as a mountain hermit. During a great pagan festival, Menas came down from the mountains to preach Christianity in Cotyaes, Phrygia. He was tried for his faith before the Roman prefect Pyrrhus, scourged, tortured and martyred.

His grave in Egypt became known as a place of miracles, and a basilica built over his grave became one of the great sanctuaries of Christendom; it was called the glory of the Libyan desert. Merchants travelling through the area spread stories about him, and churches built in his honour at Cotyaeus and Constantinople gave rise to local legends about him. The basilica was destroyed and his tomb lost in the seventh century, and was rediscovered in an archeological expidition in 1905.

Born

Egyptian

Died

• beheaded c.300 at Cotyaes, Phrygia

• buried at Mareotis, Egypt

Patronage

• falsely accused people

• peddlers

• travelling merchants

Representation

• man with his hands cut off and his eyes torn out

• man with two camels

• young knight with a halberd, an anachronistic depiction of his time in the Roman army