St. Abu Qostour the Priest’s Glorification | تمجيد الشهيد أبو قسطور القس

He was from the town of Bardnoha, in the district of Matai, Minya Governorate, Upper Egypt. He served the altar of God for about eighty years as a deacon and later as a priest. Although he was married and had children, he combined the service of the altar with a life of asceticism.
During the persecution stirred up by Emperor Diocletian and his followers, he remained steadfast in strengthening his congregation and visiting the confessors imprisoned for their faith.
The governor of Al-Qais (now a small village near Beni Mazar) heard about him, arrested him, and subjected him to various tortures: he was scourged, placed on the rack, and thrown into a heated bath furnace, yet the Lord kept him unharmed and healthy.
When the governor of Al-Qais grew weary of torturing him, he sent him bound in chains with some confessors to Bacchusianus, the governor of Alexandria. There, he endured further tortures such as branding with fire, being placed in a kiln of quicklime, having the hair of his head, beard, and nails pulled out, and the wounds rubbed with vinegar and lime. He was also forced to drink poison prepared by a sorcerer named Sidrachos; the saint made the sign of the Cross over it, and it did not harm him. The sorcerer believed and was sentenced to death by burning, and through this miracle, nine hundred and twenty people also believed and confessed Christ, completing their martyrdom with Sidrachos by fire.
As for Abba Castor, he was placed in two cauldrons of boiling oil, but it did not harm him. The Lord Jesus appeared to him in a vision in prison accompanied by the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. Finally, he completed his struggle and received the crown of martyrdom by being beheaded with the sword on the seventeenth day of the month of Tout.