The life of St Spyridon the Wonderworker
He married and had a daughter named Irene, and throughout his life he gave freely of what little he had to the poor and the homeless, a generosity the Church remembers as the root of the gift of healing and wonderworking he was given. After his wife's death he was made Bishop of Trimythous under the emperor Constantine, and as bishop he changed nothing of his plain way of living, joining the care of his flock to the same unaffected charity he had always shown.
He took part in the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325, and Church tradition remembers him there illustrating the Trinity's three persons in one being through a simple, homely sign: taking up a piece of brick, he found that fire leapt from it, water dripped from it, and only dust remained in his hand, three different things shown forth from a single object. He reposed in 348 and was buried at Trimythous. His relics were later carried first to Constantinople, then, after further upheavals, to Corfu, where they have long remained and where he is honored to this day as protector of the island.
