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St. torment. Ardalion. Of the actors (comedians). Having begun to play the role of a martyr for the people's amusement, he ended with an unhypocritical confession of Christ and death on an iron frying pan, during the reign of Maximian (at the beginning of the 4th century). † Holy Martyrs of Lithuania: Joanna, Anthony and Eustace 166 Lithuanian martyrs suffered for St. faith under the Lithuanian Prince Olgerd. Olgerd, Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1345, was baptized into Orthodoxy during his father’s lifetime 167. This was when he married Maria, Princess of Vitebsk 168. Pious Mary built a parish church of St. in Vilna on the site of the church of Ragutis. Paraskeva, in which she was buried, as well as in Vitebsk, with the permission of Olgerd, two churches were built 169. But Olgerd, having accepted Christianity according to worldly calculations, because he received the Vitebsk principality with the hand of the princess of Vitebsk, according to everyday calculations, he was ready to change Christianity. In 1342, the Pskovites invited him to reign, with the condition that he be baptized. Olgerd replied that he was baptized. Whether the Pskovites knew about his baptism is unknown; but from their words it is clear that they did not see anything Christian in his deeds and wanted to see in him a sincere Christian prince. Olgerd, according to everyday calculations, did not accept Pskov and sent his son Andrei there, who was baptized at the same time 170. Especially when his wife Maria died (this was no later than 1346) 171, Olgerd, out of pleasure to the priests and his people, who were still entrenched in paganism, again became a pagan and a ferocious pagan. Presbyter Nestor, confessor of Princess Maria; converted several Lithuanians to Christianity, including two courtiers, siblings, and favorites of Olgerd. Kumets and Nezhilo - that was the name of the brothers 172, Olgerd's favorites - did not appear at the church of Perkun to make sacrifices to the fire 173 and observed fasting on certain days. – This opened the faith of their priests. Lithuanians, so important in the eyes of the people, openly neglect the faith of their ancestors! This is an intolerable insult to the old faith. This is a danger to the priestly craft. The priests complained to Olgerd, and at their insistence, Olgerd ordered the brothers to be thrown into prison. John and Anthony, as the brothers were called in baptism, spent a whole year in prison, tormented by hunger and the dampness of the dungeon; the caresses and threats of the priests did not have time to return them to the path of lies; they remained hard. Another year, John, the elder brother, became weak and announced to the priests that he was renouncing Christianity. Olgerd freed both brothers. Anthony, neither from torment nor from caresses, ceased to be a sincere Christian. He openly performed Christian deeds and abandoned pagan ones. The priests decided to test both brothers. On the day of fasting it was said: the brothers should be at the prince’s table. John shared a meat meal, Anthony abandoned the pagan custom. Olgerd persuaded him not to neglect the Lithuanian custom. Anthony wanted to be faithful to the Christian rule, and he was again thrown into prison. This time the position of St. the sufferer was extremely aggravated. Everything that the anger of the priests could come up with was used to defeat Anthony’s firmness. But he was firm and calm; he was consoled by the fact that he was faithful to his Lord, the One who had prepared a blessed eternity for His faithful. The rumor about Anthony's firmness and his joy in prison turned many to him, and those who listened to the confessor of Christ felt that heavenly truth was speaking through his lips. The merchant, on the contrary, felt that there was no joy for him without the name of Christ. The courtiers of Olgerd themselves, accustomed to respecting military firmness, disdained the cowardly, and brother Anthony did not even want to see him. Tormented by shame and conscience, John opened his soul to the priest Nestor and asked to reconcile his brother with him. Anthony replied that he had nothing in common with the apostate of the faith. – John decided to remove his sin from his soul. Once, as usual, he served the prince in the bathhouse and here he announced that he was a Christian. Olgerd remained silent; but then he asked him in front of others: had he really renounced the faith of his fathers? John boldly answered: “Sir! I openly confess that I am a Christian again; do with me what you please, but I will no longer betray my holy faith.” Olgerd lost his temper - he beat John with his own hands, ordered him to be beaten with sticks and, shackled in heavy chains, ordered him to be thrown into prison 174. How glad Anthony was now! How light Kumets’s soul was! The brothers praised the Lord together; together they received Holy Communion. The prison of prisoners became a school of the holy faith. People gathered there to see the fearless confessors of the new faith. Amazed by their angelic calm and the power of the truth they preached, many accepted St. baptism, secret from the priests 175. Having learned that people were flocking to the prison of John and Anthony with reverence, the priests were afraid of the consequences. They came to Olgerd and, declaring that Kumets and Nezhilo were seducing the people with spells, demanded a decisive trial against them 176. Olgerd gave them to the disposal of the priests. One must imagine the rudeness of the morals of that time and the wild anger of the Lithuanian priests - these merchants, in order to understand the severity of the torment to which the saints were subjected. John and Anthony. They tormented and tormented them with all brutality. On April 14, in place of the criminals, Anthony was hanged from an oak tree. They still hoped to see weakness in John again and tormented him longer; finally, on April 24, they strangled him and hanged him on the same tree 177. The martyrdom of Anthony and John brought wonderful fruit. A relative of the martyrs, Kruglets, also a courtier of Olgerd, an intelligent and handsome young man, amazed by the firmness of St. sufferers, received baptism from the blessed one. Nestor. Olgerd, noticing that he was growing his hair (pagan Lithuanians cut their hair and shaved their beard), asked: “And are you a Christian?” Christian, Kruglets answered boldly. Olgerd, thinking to force him to his will, ordered him to eat meat. It was on the heel of Lent. Kruglets replied that he could not violate the rules of St. your faith. Proud Olgerd lost his temper. In the severe frost, he ordered cold water to be poured into Kruglets mouth. This torture stopped the breath of St. confessor, and his body turned blue. But St. Eustathius, as Kruglets is called, and after that refused forbidden food. Olgerd, in a rage, ordered Kruglets legs to be beaten and broken with iron rods and the skin and hair to be torn off from his head. The martyr endured without even showing that he was suffering. On the contrary, he still consoled the standing Christians with hopes of a blessed eternity. Finally, St. the sufferer was hanged on December 13 on the same oak tree that was consecrated by the death of John and Anthony 178. This was in 1347 179. Relics of St. The martyrs were buried “at St. Nicholas" 180, or "in the church of St. Nicholas" 181, which stood on the right corner of the current Vilna Tract 182. On the site of the martyrdom of the sufferers, under the second wife Olgerdova 183, the Church of St. Trinity with a monastery, replaced in 1514 by a magnificent stone church due to the zeal of Prince Ostrog 184. In 1364 St. Alexy established the celebration of the suffering of St. martyrs throughout the Church, 185 ; and the relics of the martyrs were witnessed in 1826, by order of St. Synod, in the Spiritual Monastery, where they were transferred for safety from the violence of the union and papism 186. Tertullian once said: “the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.” The blood of the Lithuanian martyrs was the same in Lithuania. The cruel Olgerd himself not only returned to the Christian faith, but at the end of his life he accepted monasticism; he is buried in the Church of the Most Pure One 187 that he built. All 12 of his sons were Christians of the Orthodox Church 188. The entire half of Vilna, the capital of the Principality of Lithuania, in 1387 consisted of Orthodox Christians 189 and the legate in 1393 saw “many Russian churches in Vilna” 190. Even under the pagan Keistut in Troki, his faithful servant remained with him and in prison in 1381 “Grigory Omulich” - a native of Troki, Orthodox Litvin 191, and in 1384 Vytautas donated lands and lands to the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Troki 192. Such is the power of St. faith! St. Martin the Confessor, Pope Born in the Tuscan city of Todi from parents of noble origin. Having received an excellent education, he concentrated his love on St. Scripture and dedicated himself to the service of the Church. Having managed to earn general respect in this voluntarily chosen field and having reached the rank of presbyter, after the death of Pope Theodore, against his will, he was elevated (July 5, 649) to the dignity of pope - during the reign of Emperor Constance II. The saying of Jesus Christ was not slow to be realized in the life of the saint, who was at the height of his election: “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you, and in every way unrighteously slander you for My sake... Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for of them is the kingdom of heaven”... Martin faced a struggle for the truth at the very beginning of his new path. Monothelite disputes worried the Church at that time. The Tsar and the Patriarch were infected with this heresy, which therefore influenced the superficial, ignorant impressionability of the masses. Emperor Constance, intending to put an end to these disputes about the two wills in the one person of Jesus Christ, issued an edict under the name of the type of faith (typos), which was strictly forbidden to enter into any debate about this controversial issue. Pope Martin, having received an order from Emperor Constance to confess the heretical teaching and approve it by the council, replied: “If the whole world accepted this contrary teaching, then I will not accept it and will not deviate from the Gospel and Apostolic teaching and the traditions of St. fathers, even if they had to suffer to death.” Then, having unsuccessfully appealed to Patriarch Paul of Constantinople, asking him to convince the king to abandon the heresy, Pope Martin, on the advice of St. Maximus the Confessor, convened a local council. At this council, consisting of one hundred to five Western bishops, heresy and the imperial decree regarding it were condemned. For this, by order of the angry emperor, Pope Martin was first, captured at night by military force, sent to the Cyclades islands, on one of which he was kept for a year in hunger and other hardships, and then, in 654, he was summoned to Constantinople, imprisoned in a gloomy and cramped room in an empty house, where for 93 days he was tormented by hunger and thirst. Then they brought him to court, where the pope was tried not for the affairs of the Church, but as a state criminal. With a heavy iron collar under guard, he was taken out of the Senate; they treated him so cruelly that the guards and people felt sorry for the innocent sufferer to tears... After this trial, Papa Martin languished for about a year in a common prison with the villains; Spent 85 days in the so-called Diomidova prison; then he was taken by ship to Chersonesus, where, after two years of suffering, he died in 655. He was buried in the Church of the Virgin Mary, called Blachernae. – His relics were transferred to Constantinople, and subsequently to Rome, where they are in the church of St. Martin of Tours. Celebration of the Vilna Icon of Our Lady According to local legends, the Vilna Icon was painted by Ev. Luke, brought to Vilna, as a sign of parental blessing, by Elena, daughter of the collector of Russia John III Vasilyevich, upon her marriage to Alexander, Prince of Lithuania, in 1495. After Elena’s death, the image was placed in the Prechistensky Church, where she was buried. In 1569, John IV Vasilievich offered 50 noble Lithuanian prisoners for the image to King Sigismund Augustus, but the exchange did not take place. Afterwards the image was transferred to the Vilna Trinity Cathedral, where it is now located. The author of the lives of the martyrs (placed in Macarius’s menea) calls them “newly appeared.” This shows that he wrote at the time of St. Alexis, when they established a celebration for them. Stryjkowski kr. pol. 1845. 2, 14. Lat. lit. i Russian. p. 27. “The Prince of Vitebsk, who had no sons, took him to his daughter and gave him to Vitebsk.” Stebelsky chron. r. 7. Lat. Litow. 1 kr. Russian p. 27. Collection l. 2,349. About the Church of Paraskeva, the manuscript of Daniil Lodzyata and its translation in the article: Lithuania (Vestnik Govorsky, p. 131. 132). Lviv. l. 2, 99. Karamz. 4, 157. 158, pr. 337. According to the chronicle, Olgerd married his second wife Juliania in 1349, and her first son Jagiello, Yakov, was born in 1350. In the 16th century missal. Extract from the memorial of the Prechistensky Church: “Grand Duchess Maria Yaroslavovna, deceased in memory of St. Hilarion.” This is Olgerd's first wife. Further in the same place: “Grand Duchess Juliana, in the holy schema of Mary, who died in memory of St. Apostle Simeon the Zealot.” - Gradually, Prince. 1, 1. 512, “Princess Olgerdova Ulyana, in the monastic rank of Marina, reposed in 1392.” So in Chetya-Minea; the same names are preserved by tradition in Vilna. Narbut calls them Kukley and Mphley. About the Vilna Church of Perkun, built in 1285 in an oak grove, where the cathedral church is now. Chronicle near Narbut, in the North. Arch. 1822 1, 227–231. Stebelsky zywoty ss. pan. II. Koyalovich miscellanea p. 8–9. Stebelsky zywoty ss. pan. II. Dubowicz hierarchia lib. IV sect 2. Koyalovich miscellanea p. 9. 10. Stebelsky and Dubovich ibid. Kulczynski menolog. Basii. Chet-Minea. At Narbut hist. nar. lit. John was hanged on April 24, and Anthony on July 24. Error on RKP. Anthony suffered on April 14, and John on April 24. RKP. life; Chet-Minea. On the day of suffering of St. Eustathius is shown in all chronicles on December 13th. Chronicle of Danilovich r. 169. 170. “That same summer (1347) the Grand Duke Olgerd of Lithuania killed Kruglets, who was named Eustathius in Holy Baptism, for the Orthodox Christian faith, and was buried with Saint Nicholas, with his relatives in the tomb, with the great martyrs Anthony and John, who suffered for the Orthodox Christian faith. and the crowns of heaven were received from the hand of the Lord.” Also collected. V, 228. VII, 214. Lvov. l. 2, 115. Stebelsky (Zywoty ss. pan. II, 5) and Gustinskaya l. (Collected l. II, 346) date the death of the martyrs to 1328, but this is an obvious mistake. Then Gediminas ruled Lithuania. This “Russian Church of St. Nicholas” is mentioned in the act of 1481 (Act. Zap. Ross. 1, 96). This is how its place is shown on the plan of Vilna in 1671 in the collection. gram. Vilna, Vilna 1833. Another church of St. is shown here. Nicholas, transfer of the relics of the saint, built in 1514 by Prince. Ostrozhsky, which still exists today. Narbuta Dz sar. nar. Iit. V. appendix, p. 46. According to the charter, the stone Church of the Holy Trinity was built in the same place where “from ancient times there was a wooden one with a monastery.” Collection Vilna grams. 2, 14. Vilna, 1843, near Sylvester metro station (patericon p. 176) we read: hanged “in the place where the Church of the Holy Trinity stands; Christians, having buried them in the same place, built a wooden Church of the Holy Trinity here.” Collection l. 2, 350, m. Sylvester (patericon r. 176) about St. Alexia: “having communicated with P. Philotheus, he included the Lithuanian martyrs among the saints and established their celebration on the 14th day of April.” Dubovich hierarchia lib. 4. r. 173, “to the newly-minted miracle workers who suffered under the wicked Olgerd” - in the collection of the 16th century. No. 397, p. 595. Word from Joseph, Archbishop. Lithuanian upon the consecration of the Church of St. martyrs. Vilna, 1851 East. Russian Church 2, 39. 40. Orthodoxy in Lithuania - in Christ. Read 1851 1, 443–447. Image lit. Jaros. t. 2. p. 3–7. Narbuta 5, 403. 403. Collection. l. 5.242. Collection gram. Vilna 1843 11, 146.