Agapius of Vatopedi
Our Venerable Father Agapius of Vatopedi
Venerable · d. 13th century
Commemorated 1 March — Commemoration on Mount Athos
Agapius of Vatopedi (13th century) was a young monk of the Holy Mountain, a novice at the Trinity cell of Kolitsou, a dependency of the great monastery of Vatopedi. Carried off by Turkish raiders and sold into slavery at Magnesia, he spent many years in chains, praying continually to the Mother of God, until she appeared to him and set him free, his fetters falling away and the doors of his prison opening of themselves. Yet when he returned to the Holy Mountain, his elder, holding that a debt of obedience was owed even to an earthly master, sent him back to his captor. His unresisting obedience so astonished and moved the Turk that he came to Athos with his two sons and received holy Baptism, and all three ended their days as monks — a story the Athonite tradition treasures as a parable of obedience and of the power of the Theotokos.
Agapius lived in the thirteenth century as a novice on Mount Athos, under a virtuous elder at the cell (kellion) of the Holy Trinity at Kolitsou, one of the dependencies of the monastery of Vatopedi. In an age when Turkish and piratical raids on the Holy Mountain were frequent, he was seized by raiders and carried off, sold into bondage far to the south at Magnesia in Asia Minor. There he was held in chains and set to hard labour — the tradition reckons the term at some twelve years — and through it all he did not cease to call upon the Mother of God, the Lady of the Holy Mountain, for his deliverance.
At length the Theotokos appeared to him and bade him go to his elder without fear. Waking, he found his bonds broken and the doors standing open, and walked out unhindered; and so he made his way back to the Holy Mountain and to the cell of his elder.
But the elder received him with a hard word. Hearing that Agapius had simply departed, he judged that the novice had wronged his master by fleeing, and that no man may steal even his own freedom against the obedience he owes; and he commanded him to return to Magnesia and to his master, and to serve him still. Agapius obeyed without a murmur and went back into slavery. His master, confronted with the very slave who had escaped by a miracle and had now returned of his own will at his elder's bidding, was overwhelmed — by the wonder of the escape, and still more by the humility and the faith it revealed. Moved to the heart, the Turk came with his two sons to the Holy Mountain, sought out the elder, received instruction, and was baptised together with his sons; and all three embraced the monastic life on Athos. Agapius lived out his days in the cell of his repentance and obedience, and is honoured among the venerable fathers of Vatopedi.
Feast and commemoration
Agapius is commemorated on March 1 (church date; New Calendar civil March 1; Old Calendar civil March 14) in the Athonite and Greek usage; his is a local Holy-Mountain veneration. His feast falls within Great Lent, and his memory is kept with the Triodion of the day.
Iconography
Agapius is depicted as a young monk of the Holy Mountain, in habit and mantle, sometimes shown with the broken chains of his captivity or at the moment of his miraculous release by the Mother of God. No storable pre-modern icon proper to him has been identified; a suitable public-domain image is wanting.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the martyrs of Vatopedi — the monks of that monastery put to death by the Latin-minded party in the reign of Michael VIII Palaeologus, in the aftermath of the Union of Lyons (1274), whom the Athonite tradition commemorates as martyrs. Agapius is a venerable father, not a martyr; his contest was of obedience, not of blood.
- Not to be confused, either, with the martyr Agapius who leads Agapius and his companions, the eight young men beheaded at Caesarea in Palestine under Diocletian (March 15) — a wholly different saint of the age of the persecutions; this Agapius is the thirteenth-century Athonite novice.