Protion

Holy Martyr Protion was put to the sword, with the Holy Martyr Dimas, at the beginning of the fourth century, in the time of the emperor Maximian Herculius. The place of their martyrdom is not known.

The Byzantine synaxaria note briefly that Dimas and Protion were beheaded. Metropolitan Sophronius Eustratiades found in a manuscript of the Athos Lavra, under 19 March, a fuller Life of them (the ending is lost). It tells that the two presented themselves of their own will to the governor of the region and confessed Christ openly. The governor ordered them stripped, bound in chains and beaten with straps of ox hide and with rods with sharp thorns. Then they were carried on mats to prison, where they stayed thirty days without food or water. An angel of the Lord healed their wounds and fed them with heavenly food, as the word says, man ate angels' bread. After a month, at the governor's order, they were brought before him healthy, as if they had suffered no torment. A crowd of pagans fell at the feet of Dimas and Protion crying that they were Christians; the governor ordered at once that all who had turned to the faith be beheaded. Dimas and Protion he charged with sorcery, but they answered that not magic but Christ had healed them. The governor ordered them burned, but the fire did not touch them. Protion was beheaded first, then the executioner cut off Dimas's head.

In the Menaion, under 12/25 April, there is a canon in honour of Dimas and Protion, composed by Venerable Joseph the Hymnographer. St Protion is commemorated on 25 April, in the new style; their names have not been entered in the present calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church.