Saint Spyridon the Wonderworker, Bishop of Trimythous
Bishop of Trimythous in Cyprus, Father of the First Council
- Feast day
- December 12
- Lived
- c. 270–348
- Patronage
- Corfu, shepherds, potters, those in financial distress
A shepherd who became a bishop without ever ceasing to be a shepherd, Saint Spyridon confounded the philosophers at Nicaea and remains, in his shrine on Corfu, one of the most visibly active saints in Orthodoxy.
Life
Spyridon kept sheep in Cyprus, married, and had a daughter, Irene. Widowed, he was made bishop of Trimythous and continued to work with his flocks, wearing the plain woven shepherd's cap that appears in every icon of him.
At the First Ecumenical Council in 325 he answered a philosopher who was arguing against the Trinity not with syllogisms but by taking up a clay tile: fire flashed upward, water ran down, and clay remained in his hand — one thing in three. The philosopher was baptised.
Corfu and the relics
His body, incorrupt and still flexible, was brought to Corfu in 1456 after the fall of Constantinople. Four times a year it is carried in procession through the town in thanksgiving for deliverances from plague, famine and the Ottoman siege of 1716. The slippers on his relics are said to wear out and are replaced periodically.