Date according to the old style: August 10. On this day, the memory of Saint Lawrence of Rome, who lived in the 3rd century and served as the archdeacon of the Christian community in Rome, is honored. According to his life story, Lawrence was from the city of Huesca, in what is now Spain, and was a disciple of Archdeacon Sixtus. When Sixtus became the bishop of Rome, Lawrence was ordained as a deacon; he was entrusted with overseeing the church's property and caring for the poor. When Emperor Valerian declared the persecution of Christians, many priests were executed, and ordinary Christians were deprived of their property and expelled from cities. One of the first victims was Lawrence's mentor, who was beheaded by the ruler's order. As he went to his death, Sixtus predicted to his disciple that he would soon follow in his path and ordered him to sell all the church's treasures and give the money to the needy Christians. Indeed, shortly afterward, Lawrence was imprisoned, where he performed miracles, healed the sick, and thus converted many to his faith. When the Roman prefect demanded that the church's treasures be handed over to the state, Lawrence asked for three days. During this time, he distributed the wealth to the poor and then appeared before the ruler with a crowd of beggars and cripples, saying, "These are the true treasures of the church." Enraged, the prefect ordered Lawrence to be subjected to brutal torture, from which the saint died. The Russian Orthodox Church also commemorates on this day the locally venerated saint, Blessed Lawrence of Kaluga, who lived in the 15th-16th centuries. According to tradition, his gift helped protect Kaluga from the attack of the Crimean Tatars in 1512. Near the place where Saint Lawrence was buried, the Lavrentiev Monastery was built. In folk tradition, Lawrence was considered a healer of eye diseases. Therefore, people prayed to him for vision restoration and protection from the evil eye. At noon on Lawrence's day, people would go out to look at the water in rivers and lakes: if it was calm and quiet, autumn would be windless, and winter—free from storms and blizzards. "Autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and the rain is falling," people would say. They also paid attention to the weather: intense heat or heavy rains predicted the same for the entire autumn. These same signs foretold good fishing at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Name days on this day: Athanasius, Vyacheslav, Lawrence, Roman