Rheginus

Saint Rheginus (Reginos) is commemorated in Cyprus together with Saint Orestes. Both are unknown to the synaxarists, but they are honoured in Cyprus, where they suffered at the hands of pagans. They are said to have come from Chalcedon (perhaps Carthage), where they were seized by the governor and imprisoned for being Christians. When they were freed they fled to Cyprus, where they died as martyrs near Limassol. This information comes from their service, published in Limassol in 1902.

According to a fuller account, Reginos had the Latin name Vonomilix. On entering the Roman army he gave his possessions to the poor so as to have no earthly ties, and in the army he lived very strictly, eating only dry bread once a day. Pagans denounced him to the general Prezentinos. Asked whether he was a Christian and ordered to sacrifice to the gods, Reginos answered that he would not sacrifice to false gods but only to the true God. Nine soldiers laid him on the ground and beat him, then placed him on a heated copper table, but the fire did not burn him. The general ordered him put alive into a sack and thrown into the sea forty miles from shore. Reginos got out of the sack, and two dolphins guided him to the beach. Many came to see the wonder, Orestes among them; the people shouted that great is the God of the Christians. The general thought he had escaped by magic and arrested Reginos again, with Orestes and those who had accepted the faith, and put them in prison, ordering their execution the next day. In prison Reginos catechized the new Christians. At dawn an angel opened the prison doors, and Reginos, Orestes and others fled to Cyprus.

There some became hermits, while Reginos and Orestes chose to be missionaries. They left Paphos, came to Neapolis of Limassol, where they proclaimed Christianity, and then to the village of Fasoula, eight kilometres from Limassol, a centre of idolatry. There they were seized, tortured and beheaded. Christians who had watched in secret buried them. It is not certain that Orestes was killed at the same time, though tradition names him with Reginos.

After some years, when Christianity had become dominant, Reginos's grave was lost. A priest of Fasoula dreamed that Saint Reginos showed him the place; the relics were found there with a sheath bearing their names. The priest built a great church in their honour, and every year on 20 August the people of Fasoula celebrate their memory. The saints are also honoured in the village of Apliki in Nicosia and in Tremithousa in Paphos. The old church at Fasoula is in ruins, with a new church beside it from 1981. A part of the relics is kept in the Panagia Fasoula church in Cyprus. They are commemorated on 20 August, according to the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).