Devotees of the Faith in the East after the Fall of the Greek Empire

With the fall of the Greek Empire under the rule of the Turks, difficult times came for the Christians of the Greek Church. Humiliation before the fans of the false prophet, the prohibition to build new churches and restore old ones, embarrassment in fulfilling the duties of faith and piety, seduction by worldly benefits, slander and violence in an unsettled state - everything was armed against the confessors of the name of Christ. But the Church, suffering in the fire of temptation, courageously overcame and is overcoming all the tricks of the spirit of malice and deceit. Among its shepherds, monks and laity, there was never a shortage of such men who, when faced with difficult circumstances, like the ancient martyrs, rejecting flattering offers and not fearing any hardships, rather agreed to sacrifice their lives than to betray the duty of a Christian. In their suffering and courage, the glorious exploits of the confessors of the faith in the first centuries of Christianity were renewed for the Church. The grace of God apparently strengthened the new confessors and martyrs. Some of them, during their lifetime, were awarded the gift of miracles; and after their martyrdom, their holy relics were a source of miracles, to strengthen the faith of the brothers still remaining in the feat, and to admonish the infidels. Information about these martyrs of modern times, at the end of the last century, was collected and published in the world by the Svyatogorsk monk Nikodim, known for his many works for the benefit of the Church, in the book: New collection of stories about the martyrs 1. This book offers more or less detailed accounts of the life, sufferings and miracles of the new martyrs of the Greek Church, and some only have names. Of these martyrs, fifteen belong to the end of the 15th and 16th centuries, twenty-eight to the 17th, and thirty-seven to the 18th. Among them there are Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Vlachs, and Russians. From the Russians, information is provided here about the martyrs who died in the Greek land: Paul in 1683, Pachomius in 1730, and Constantine in 1743. From among these new ascetics of the faith, we have the well-known names and sufferings of St. John of Belograd (June 2) and St. George the New (May 26) 2 . But in the “collection of synaxarions” or short lives of the saints, translated into Modern Greek by the same Holy Mountainer Nicodemus, corrected and supplemented, the names of all the new martyrs are included 3 . In the Greek Menaions, published in 1843, after careful consideration by a special Commission and with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch German and his synod, the names of these martyrs are also placed along with the names of the ancient ascetics of faith and piety. In addition, both in the collection of synaxarions and in the Menaions, the names of the martyrs of the present century up to 1818 are found. There is no doubt that all these meetings do not include legends about everyone who sealed the truth of their faith with their blood in these difficult times of the Turkish yoke for the Eastern Church. Ave. Maxim the Greek, in his writings, left information about the martyrdom of one young man in Constantinople, which he himself witnessed 4, therefore before 1518. But we do not find this legend in Nicodemus. Blessed Patriarch Nektarios of Jerusalem (17th century), reflecting various reproaches of the Latins against the Orthodoxy of the Eastern Church, wrote: “there is no city or place where the blood of our Orthodox has not been shed for piety; several years before this, we also saw children constantly bowing their necks to the blow of the sword.” Moreover, the Nikodimovo collection is limited only by the boundaries of the Patriarchate of Constantinople: how many similar experiences of the courage of faith could the long history of the difficult times of other patriarchs of the East present! - But even those legends that the pious zeal of God-loving men have preserved are sufficient to testify to the strength and power of grace-filled life in the Church, which for so many centuries has languished under the yoke of other faiths and always presents new champions of the faith, ready to stand for it to the point of bleeding. The communion of the Russian Church with the Churches of the East, which together constitute the one, holy, catholic and Apostolic Church, makes us partakers of the glory of martyrdom, with which our brethren from the East are adorned. Intending to offer pious readers some tales from the above-mentioned “collection of stories about martyrs,” for the first time we present in translation the tale of the exploits and suffering of the holy martyr Cosmas. In the “collection of the synaxars” and in the Greek Menaion his name is remembered on August 4th, thus: On the same day, the holy new hieromartyr and Equal-to-the-Apostles Cosmas died, having suffered strangulation in Albania in 1779. * You have appeared as a beautiful decoration, blessed Cosmas, Having sanctified the world with your words and blood. Published in Venice in Modern Greek in 1799. Nicodemus' tales about both are translated from the Slavic language Published in Venice in Modern Greek in 1819 The story of the Greek monk Maximus, a self-witness of the torment of a certain newly-minted martyr in the Greek land. In RK. collection of his works, Trinity Sergeev Lavra, No. 5, article 96 For the text in Greek, see the original edition of the ABC of Faith. You might be interested in: