Hymn for the Holy Martyr Emiliano, in the church of the same name on Skuse Hilltranslated

Written by Panos N. Avramopoulos

On Saturday 18-7-26, the sensuous and verdant hill of Skouse in Kolonos glowed with the Byzantine purple - this excellent lung of our Athens - and smelled of the religious fervor of the stormy crowd of Athenians, who flocked solemnly to celebrate - honor his sacred memory. martyr of our Orthodoxy Emiliano. Of the god-bearing young man from Dorystolo in Thrace, who, filled with unwavering faith and incomparable zeal for the ideal of Orthodoxy, fearlessly tore down the idols of a pagan temple and presented himself immediately – to prevent the incrimination of any other innocent – to the prefect of the Roman emperor Julian the Parabatus, to declare his vertical and practical reaction to a religion that is false, perishable and without moral content! And the prefect then ordered, in the refusal of our hieromartyr to apologize, to beat him mercilessly, to torture him horribly and finally to burn him alive! But such was the fire of the soul of the brilliant young man of Thrace, for the faith of our Christ, that no fire could bear it. Martyred burning horribly, to win...