July 14th.

St. Phocas of Sinope.

This 4th century martyr from a settlement on the Black Sea deserves to be better known in England for he was a practitioner of one our principal national activities – gardening.  There is a certain confusion in the martyrologies over his life: one version transfers him to Antioch, another has him as bishop of Sinope, which he was not, but he was most definitely a gardener.  Living as a hermit, he cultivated his own produce and maintained a guest-house, feeding guests and pilgrims with the fruits of his own labour, and giving all the rest to the poor.  In a time of persecution, he was condemned without trial as a Christian.  The soldiers sent to arrest him stayed in his guest-house and enjoyed his hospitality without realising who he was.  The unrecognised Phocas told them he would help them search for him the next day.  During the night he used the spade, so often employed for digging in his flower-beds and vegetable plots, to dig his own grave.  In the morning he identified himself; the soldiers were then reluctant to proceed to their task, but he assured them he regarded martyrdom as the highest honour, and ordered them to do their duty.  The place of his death became a much visited shrine.  He became patron of Black Sea and Mediterranean sailors (possibly because his name is similar to the Greek for ‘seal’, then as now regarded as an affable maritime creature).