Florus and Laurus
The early Christian twin brothers Florus and Laurus (both * in Constantinople ; † in Ulpiana , Dardania , today's Kosovo ) were, according to a Greek legend, stonemasons who converted many people in Illyria to Christianity. They are venerated as saints .
Legend
According to legend, the twin brothers learned the stonemasonry from two Christians named Maximus and Proculus. From Likaion, the prefect of the province of Illyria, they received the order to build a pagan temple. The brothers distributed their wages to the poor. When the son of a pagan priest named Mamertin was injured by a stone chip, Florus and Laurus healed the boy after converting him to Christianity, whereupon Mamertin also converted to Christianity.
After the temple was completed, Florus and Laurus called numerous Christians from the surrounding area, who smashed the pagan statues in the temple, erected a cross and spent the night in prayer. The prefect then had 300 Christians, including Mamertin and his son, cremated. Florus and Laurus, however, were thrown into a cistern, which was then covered with earth.
Adoration
The relics of the twins were, according to legend as incorruptible . On the day of her death, a severe horse sickness ended , so that Florus and Laurus were associated with horses . The relics were to Constantinople Opel transferred where their presence around 1200 by Archbishop Anthony or around 1350 by Stephan, both pilgrims from Novgorod was confirmed.
Both in Rus and in Russia , Florus and Laurus have been the patron saints of horses since ancient times . They are therefore depicted on numerous icons together with horses. The saint's feast day falls on August 18, and on that day farmers did not plow on horses for fear of rinderpest .
The Ascension Monastery in Kiev , originally a wooden church from the 16th century, which was rebuilt after the Great Fire in Podil in 1811 , and numerous Orthodox churches in Russia and Ukraine are named after Florus and Laurus. The Florus and Laurus Church in the Samoskvorechye district of Moscow, built in the 17th century, was closed in 1938, but restored in the 1980s and returned to the Moscow Patriarchate in 1991 .
More twin brothers than martyrs
Individual evidence
- ↑ James Frazer : The Golden Bough . P. 344. Online partial view
- ↑ Boris A Mozhaev: 'Lively' and Other Stories . Hodgson, 2008. ISBN 978-1-906164-01-0 . P. 85. Online partial view
Web links
- Robert Florus: The Christian Saints of Albania . University of Mississippi, 2000.
- Orthodox Church in America