The Living Archive
Floodwaters Recede Before Bishop Racing to Save Innocent Man
Travellers report a swollen river opened a dry path after St Spyridon, hurrying to reach a condemned prisoner before sentence was carried out, refused to wait for the flood to fall.
A bishop’s urgent journey to prevent what witnesses feared would be the wrongful execution of an innocent man took an extraordinary turn yesterday when a river, swollen beyond its banks after days of heavy rain, reportedly opened a path for St Spyridon of Trimythous and his companion to cross.
The bishop had set out after receiving word that a prisoner faced imminent execution despite widespread claims of his innocence. Knowing that every hour mattered, Spyridon left at once, hoping to reach the authorities before the sentence could be carried out.
“He did not stop to see whether it would open. He walked at it.”
His route ended abruptly at a raging river.
Recent storms had turned a normally passable crossing into a torrent. Travelers had already abandoned hope of getting over, choosing instead to wait for the flood to subside.
Witnesses say Spyridon did not.
Standing at the river’s edge, the bishop raised his eyes in prayer and declared that no obstacle should prevent a journey undertaken for the sake of justice and mercy.
Those nearby report that, as he stepped forward, the waters drew back, leaving a dry passage where moments before the current had raged.
Spyridon and his companion crossed safely.
Onlookers remained on the opposite bank, watching in silence as the bishop continued his journey without pausing to look behind him.
Thanks to the crossing, Spyridon arrived before the sentence could be carried out. The tradition records that the prisoner’s life was spared, and that officials, shaken by the bishop’s arrival and by his reputation, agreed to reconsider the case.
For those who have since told the story, the wonder at the river is inseparable from what followed. The waters did not part to display power. They parted to hasten an act of mercy, and a man who was to have died that day did not.
Is this account meant to make Spyridon a second Moses? The parallels to the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14) and of the Jordan (Joshua 3) are drawn deliberately by Orthodox writers, and have been for centuries.
But the tradition does not use them to elevate the saint. It uses them to say that the God who opened those waters is the same God, and that He opened this one for the sake of a condemned man nobody else was hurrying to save.
Sources & Documentation
The Cloud of Witnesses reports nothing it cannot source. Each account is held to the standard of the Church’s own discernment.
- The Life of St Spyridon of Trimythous (traditional Greek hagiography)
- The Great Synaxaristes (Greek Orthodox tradition)
- Orthodox Church in America — Life of St Spyridon the Wonderworker
- Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America — St Spyridon the Wonderworker