Great Martyr Phanourios the Newly-Revealed, of Rhodes

ADDITION: the unique feature of this saint's veneration has been expanded — it rests entirely on iconography rather than a written text, a genuine and well-documented feature of his cult, not a database shortcoming.

The Holy Great Martyr Phanourios the Newly-Revealed of Rhodes is one of the most unusual saints in the Orthodox calendar: no written vita of him exists in the ordinary sense. The sole source for his cult is a miraculously discovered icon. According to tradition, during 14th-century repairs to the walls of Rhodes, workers found among the ruins of a long-destroyed church an icon in pristine condition, while everything else around it had decayed.

It depicted a young soldier holding a cross topped by a burning candle, surrounded by twelve border scenes narrating his torments — stoning, the rack, scourging, flesh-tearing with iron hooks, imprisonment, burning with candles, crushing, exposure to wild beasts, a falling boulder, forced sacrifice over hot coals, and finally death by fire.

Metropolitan Nilus of Rhodes read the barely legible inscription "Holy Phano..." after prayer, and successfully petitioned the Ottoman authorities to allow the church's restoration. The Church accepted the icon's miraculous preservation itself as sufficient grounds for canonization, establishing August 27 (the date of the icon's discovery) as his feast. He is venerated as patron of Rhodes and of finding lost things; the phanouropita cake is baked in his honor.