17 February/2 March

In the city of Amasea, in the province of Pontus, during the Emperor Maximian's (286­305) persecution, the soldier Theodore, together with other Christians, was required to renounce Christ and to offer sacrifice to idols. When he refused to do this, Theodore was subjected to cruel tortures and was confined in a dungeon. Here, during prayer, he was consoled by a miraculous appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. After a certain time, the martyr was brought out of the dungeon, and by various tortures they again tried to compel him to renounce Christ. Finally, seeing the inflexibility of the martyr, the ruler sentenced him to burning. Saint Theodore himself entered the fire dauntlessly, and here, with prayer and doxology he gave up his soul about the year 305. His body was buried in the city of Euchaita (in Asia Minor). Later, his relics were translated to Constantinople, to the church named after him; his head is located in Gaeta, Italy.

Some fifty years after the death of Saint Theodore, the Emperor Julian the Apostate (361­363), desiring to defile the Christian Great Lent, ordered the city governor of Constantinople to sprinkle secretly the provisions sold in the markets with blood from sacrifices to idols each day throughout the first week of the Fast. Saint Theodore appeared in a night vision to Eudoxius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, and ordered him to announce to the Christians that they should not buy the defiled provisions in the markets, but should use kolivo (kutia), that is, boiled wheat with honey, as food. In commemoration of this event, the Orthodox Church to this day celebrates the memory of the Great­martyr Theodore the Tyro annually on the first Saturday of Great Lent. On the eve, on Friday (or on Saturday), after the Prayer Behind the Ambo, a Moleben is served to Saint Theodore the Tyro (his epithet "tyro" means "recruit" in Latin) and kutia is blessed