Fantinus the Elder

Saint Fantinus the Elder, also called the Horseman or the Wonderworker, was a Christian of Calabria devoted to prayer and a friend of the poor. He was born at Tauriana, on the Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria, in 294 and reposed there on 24 July 336. His life is known chiefly from the Life written in Greek by Bishop Peter of Taureana in the 8th century.

He served a Roman patrician, Balsamius, as keeper of horses (hence the nickname) and was secretly a Christian. At night he ground the grain of poor peasants with his master's horses. The deed was seen by some malicious people, who urged Balsamius to watch him. The first time he escaped his master's anger through a miracle, and the second time he fled. His flight was blocked by the swift waters of the river Metauros (today Petrace), but Fantinus, like Moses, stopped the waters with his whip and with prayer and crossed "as on dry ground". Seeing the wonder, Balsamius was ashamed, asked forgiveness and became a Christian.

Twenty miracles told by Bishop Peter are known. Among them is the miracle of the Agarene ship of 24 July 650: a sudden storm hurled it against a rock, and the survivors told that they had seen on the rock a youth holding a smoking coal and a woman in purple; they afterward became Christians. Fantinus died at about the age of forty and was buried in a crypt of the Roman period, beneath a church of the 19th century.

In the late 1980s a group of young people from Palmi rediscovered the church and the crypt in a state of deep neglect. In 1994, on 24 July, they restored the old feast, with a procession of horsemen and the Divine Liturgy in Byzantine Greek, together with the Byzantine community of Reggio Calabria. The saint lived in the time of the undivided Church, and prayer gatherings between Orthodox and Catholics are held at his crypt.