Autonomus

Saint Autonomus, Hieromartyr, was a bishop, according to tradition in Italy, who fled to Bithynia from Diocletian's persecution, preached there and died a martyr in the year 313. He is remembered on 12 September.

His life was composed in the time of the emperor Justin I, on the basis of earlier traditions. According to it Autonomus was bishop in the city of Praeneste. In Diocletian's great persecution he moved to the Bithynian village of Soreoi, near Nicomedia. There he lodged with Cornelius, whom he baptized and then made deacon. In that village he built a church in the name of the Archangel Michael. Then he left the village and laboured in Christian mission in Lycaonia and Isauria. Returning to Soreoi, he ordained Cornelius priest. When the emperor Diocletian came to Nicomedia, Autonomus withdrew to Claudiopolis, where he preached with success. After the persecution ceased he returned to Soreoi and ordained Cornelius bishop; together they built the church dedicated to the Archangel Michael, where both served. Then he brought to Christ the inhabitants of the neighbouring village of Limne and destroyed a pagan temple. The priests of the temple were enraged and attacked him with stones and clubs during the Liturgy in the church of the Archangel Michael. Those serving with him fled, and the pagans killed Autonomus at the altar, in the year 313.

In the time of Constantine the Great, Severian built a chapel on the site of Autonomus' tomb; the chapel was dismantled about 430, and some sixty years later his relics were found incorrupt and a new church was built in his honour. The church of the Archangel Michael that Autonomus had built in Bithynia was rebuilt in the time of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Autonomus is also called the first bishop of the city of Claudiopolis. His veneration is alive in all the Orthodox Churches, and in the Menaion of the Greek Church an apolytikion in tone one is dedicated to him.