Teletius of Nicomedia

Holy Martyr Teletius of Nicomedia is commemorated together with Eusebius, Charalampius, Romanus and Christina. All we know of them is that they were burned in Nicomedia, in a church, as one of the old books of the Great Church records.

Most Byzantine calendars commemorate them on 30 May, among them the synaxarion of the Church of Constantinople of the late tenth century and the typikon of the Great Church of the ninth and tenth centuries. The verse synaxaria, however, divide them into two groups. Romanus and Meletius are said to have been cut down by the sword and are commemorated on 30 May, while the burned ones, Eusebius and Christina, are placed on 31 May, and the name of Christina is dropped. In this form their memory entered the printed Greek Menaia and the Synaxaristes of Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite.

The Martyrology of Blessed Jerome mentions on 30 May some courtiers of Nicomedia, and so Archbishop Sergius (Spassky) supposed that the martyrs were among the Christians of the court who were tortured and killed after the two fires in Diocletian's palace in 303. The scholar H. Delehaye, however, relying on the Carthage calendar, holds that "Nicomedia" arose from a change in the name of the African province of Numidia. The synaxis in their honour was held in the church of the Great Martyr Euphemia near the church of Saint Laurence in Petria, and according to one manuscript in the Dexiokratiana quarter.

Teletius, called Meletius in some sources, is not included in the present calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church. The calendar we follow gives him on 13 June, in the new style.