Orthodox saints and name days on April 8

Name days on April 8

Kalliope, Kalliopi, Calliope, Callie, Agabus, Rufus

Saints and feasts of April 8

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  Kalliope

  Holy Woman, Καλλιόπη

  St. Kalliope is honored among the martyrs of the early Church, one of those who suffered for Christ during the Roman persecutions. The synaxaria preserve little of her life beyond her faithful confession unto death.

  Name days: Kalliope, Kalliopi, Calliope, Callie

• Agabus, Rufus, Phlegon and Asyncritus

  Apostle, Άγαβος, Ρούφος, Φλέγων και Ασύγκριτος

  These four are numbered among the Seventy Apostles. Agabus is the prophet of the Acts of the Apostles who foretold the famine under Claudius and the arrest of Paul in Jerusalem. Rufus, greeted by Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, is said by tradition to have become bishop of Thebes in Greece.

  Name days: Agabus, Rufus

• Celestine of Rome

  Hierarch, Κελεστίνος Πάπας Ρώμης

  Celestine was Bishop of Rome from 422 to 432. Learned in the Scriptures, he was a firm defender of the Orthodox faith and condemned the teaching of Nestorius, sending his legates to the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus.

• Pausilypos of Heraclea

  Martyr, Παυσίλυπος

  Pausilypos confessed Christ at Heraclea in Thrace during the reign of the emperor Hadrian in the second century. He was scourged with iron rods and handed over for further torment.

• John the Ship-Captain

  Martyr, Ιωάννης ο Ναύκληρος

  John was a ship-owner of the island of Kos who, tradition relates, was falsely accused of having accepted Islam and was pressed to confirm it. He firmly confessed that he was a Christian and would die as one.

• Niphon of Novgorod

  Hierarch, Νήφων Νόβγκοροντ

  Niphon was a monk of the Kiev Caves Monastery, chosen Bishop of Novgorod in the twelfth century. He was a strict ascetic and a builder of churches, and defended the canonical order of the Church in a time of political strife.

• John Koulikas

  Martyr, Ιωάννης ο Κουλικάς

  John Koulikas was a Christian who, in the sixteenth century, was accused before the Ottoman authorities and urged to embrace Islam. He refused and confessed Christ.