Saint Miles | |
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![]() Icon of Miles from a church dedicated to him in Patras | |
Bishop and Martyr | |
Died | 340/341 |
Venerated in | Eastern Orthodox Church Oriental Orthodoxy Roman Catholic Church |
Major shrine | Church of Saint Milos, Patras, Greece |
Feast | November 10 |
Miles (Syriac: ܡܝܠܣ, Greek: Μίλης),[1] sometimes Mar Miles (Saint Miles),[2] was the bishop of Susa in Sasanian Persia from before 315 until his martyrdom in 340 or 341. He engaged in efforts to evangelize Susa, traveled widely in the Eastern Roman Empire and led the opposition to Papa bar ʿAggai and the supremacy of the bishops of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in the Persian church. He was executed by the Sasanian authorities at the start of the Forty-Year Persecution.
Miles is mentioned in the Syriac Martyrology of 411.[3] Sozomen in his Historia Ecclesistica, written in Constantinople in the first half of the 5th century,[3] briefly summarizes a Syriac account of the life of Miles.[4] Towards the end of the 6th century, a fuller Syriac hagiography appeared, the Acts of Miles[5] or Martyrdom of Miles.[6] His story also found its way into the Old English Martyrology.[7]