A saint's day
St Boniface of Tarsus
St Boniface was the steward of Aglaia, a rich young woman of Rome, and lived with her in sin, spending his days in drunkenness, yet both felt the sting of conscience. Aglaia sent him east to bring back the relics of a martyr; at Tarsus he saw Christians being tortured, kissed their wounds and confessed Christ himself, and after he came through boiling tar unharmed he was beheaded. His companions carried his body to Rome, where Aglaia received it with reverence and spent her remaining years in repentance.
The dates
- Kept on
- 19 December (1 January on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Because he knew the bondage of drink and was delivered from it, Orthodox Christians, especially wives and mothers, pray to him for loved ones caught in drunkenness. It is a Russian and Ukrainian tradition, little known among Greeks.
He is a different saint from St Boniface of Mainz, the English missionary honored as the Apostle to the Germans, who has no such patronage.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast: