Hieromartyr Hypatius of Gangra

Hieromartyr Hypatius served as bishop of Gangra in Paphlagonia (Asia Minor) in the early 4th century. He took part in the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325, which condemned the Arian heresy, and was renowned as a wonderworker who healed the sick and cast out demons while living an ascetic, monk-like life.

Returning from Constantinople around 326, he was ambushed in a deserted place by followers of the Novatian schismatics Novatus and Felicissimus, who wounded him with swords and stakes and threw him from a high bank; one tradition holds that an Arian-sympathizing woman delivered the fatal blow with a stone.

The murderers hid his body in a cave, but a peasant discovered it through miraculous signs, and the people of Gangra recovered and honorably buried their bishop. His relics subsequently became famous for miracles of healing and exorcism.

His feast is kept on March 31/April 13.

HONEST CAVEAT: the vita's narrative details are largely hagiographic rather than strictly historical (the surviving Life, in two recensions, was excluded as non-canonical in the Typikon of Patriarch Nicephorus), though his episcopate and attendance at Nicaea are accepted as fact.