The Names Socrates and Plato in the Orthodox Church Calendar

An interesting observation: Socrates, like Plato, is a baptismal Orthodox name found in the calendar of saints.

Socrates appears in the church calendar three times: the Hieromartyr Presbyter Socrates of Ancyra, the Martyr Socrates of Perga in Pamphylia, and the Venerable Martyr Socrates of Tiberiopolis.

Plato features in the Orthodox menologion six times: Plato of Ancyra; Plato Gorny, of the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg; the Hieromartyr Bishop Plato of Banja Luka; the Venerable Martyr Hieromonk Plato, of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs; the Hieromartyr Bishop Plato of Reval, of the Synaxis of the Saints of the Land of Estonia; and the Venerable Abbot Plato of Stoudios.

In the Christian Church Plato and Socrates are venerated sages, depicted in churches and in church books. Blessed Augustine wrote of Plato in his work The City of God: “None have come nearer to us than the philosophers of his school.” What is more, Plato and Socrates even appear on iconostases, where they can sometimes be found at the very bottom, beneath the icons of the local tier. The pre-Christian philosophers, so it is held, though they had not known Christ, strove towards an understanding of divine revelation.

Besides Socrates and Plato, the calendar of saints also yields Zeno, Pompey, Patroclus, Pyrrhus, Satyrus, Phaedrus and Themistocles