Paul

Paul was Bishop of Gortyna in Crete toward the end of the great persecution of the Christians and at the time when Christians gained freedom under Emperor Constantine the Great. He is commemorated on the first Sunday of October as a saint honoured in Crete; no date of canonization is known.

According to tradition, in the year 312, after Constantine saw the sign of the Holy Cross in the sky, Bishop Paul went to Rome with the emperor and asked for permission to raise the relics of the Ten Martyrs of Crete, put to death under Decius in 250. When he returned to Crete he went, with other Christians, some of them elderly and remembering what the martyrs had suffered 62 years before, to the place where they were buried, called Alonia. Their names were kept until the middle of the sixth century, when the martyrion that records the event was written, 200 years later, and they were commemorated every year on the feast of the Ten Martyrs. The names are not preserved today. When the relics were uncovered, Saint Paul found them incorrupt and moved them to the city of Gortyna, where they were celebrated for centuries, as well as throughout Crete.