St. Nicanor

Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

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January 10 · Martyr

St. Nicanor

St. Nicanor

Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

Traditional feast

January 10
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1914)

Current feast

July 28 (also listed: December 28)
Secondary source · Wikipedia

Represents

Martyr

Early life

Selected sentences from the original account, unaltered.

Thin entry · the 1914 book gives only 50 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

Saint Nicanor, one of the first seven deacons appointed by the Apostles, was a native of Cyprus, to which he returned, that he might preach the Gospel on the dispersion of the Apostles.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Stay faithful when it costs you. This account is about holding firm under pressure.

Share your faith, in words and by example. Preaching and conversion are central here.

Learn from the kind of life it was. Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

Read more

The full original · 50 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. Commemorated by the Greeks on July 28th and December 28th.

Saint Nicanor, one of the first seven deacons appointed by the Apostles, was a native of Cyprus, to which he returned, that he might preach the Gospel on the dispersion of the Apostles. He was variously tortured and then executed, in the reign of Vespasian, but where is not known.

Feast days

Feast: July 28
Traditional: January 10

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Nicanor's story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on January 10
T

Sts. Thecla and Justina

January 10 · Virgin
St. Marcian

St. Marcian

January 10 · Priest
D

St. Domitian

January 10 · Bishop, Confessor
← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

Image: Nicanor the Deacon by Fedor Zubov (1685, Smolensky cathedral of Novodevichiy convent).jpg · Федор Зубов. · Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain.

Image: Федор Зубов., Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.