Auxentius the New Martyr
The Holy New Martyr Auxentius of Constantinople
New Martyr · b. 1690, in the diocese of Vellas near Ioannina — d. 1720, at Constantinople
Commemorated 25 January — Martyrdom of Auxentius at Constantinople
Auxentius the New Martyr (1690–1720) was a Greek craftsman and sailor of Constantinople who confessed Christ before the Ottoman authorities and was put to death for refusing to embrace Islam. Born in the diocese of Vellas near Ioannina in Epirus, he came young to Constantinople and worked as a furrier and then aboard ship. Falsely accused by Muslim shipmates of having promised to become a Muslim, he fled, repented of his careless life, and was seized with a longing for martyrdom. Denounced and arrested, he was beaten, blinded in one eye, and tortured, but held fast in his confession of Christ, and was beheaded at Constantinople on January 25, 1720. His body was ransomed by a Christian of the sultan's household and buried with honour by Patriarch Jeremiah III; he is venerated among the New Martyrs under the Ottoman yoke.
Auxentius was born in 1690 in the region of Vellas, in the metropolitan district of Ioannina in Epirus, of Orthodox Christian parents, and came while still young with his family to Constantinople. There he learned the trade of a furrier, and afterwards left it to work on the ships, where — the tradition candidly records — he fell for a time into a careless and worldly manner of life among mixed company.
His Muslim shipmates, falling out with him, brought against him the accusation, easily fatal under Ottoman law, that he had promised to deny Christ and become a Muslim. Fearing that they would denounce him to the ship's captain, Auxentius left the ship and returned to Constantinople, where the danger of his position and the memory of his slack living worked in him a deep repentance; and there grew in him, as in so many of the new martyrs of that age, an ardent desire to confess Christ and to wash away his sins by martyrdom. When the accusation was pressed, he was arrested and brought before the authorities, who by turns flattered and threatened him to make him accept Islam.
Auxentius steadfastly refused. His accusers and the officers fell upon him and beat him with an iron bar, so that he lost an eye and several teeth; but through every torture he confessed only Christ and would in no way deny him. The vizier at last condemned him to death, and he was beheaded at Constantinople on January 25, 1720. An Orthodox Christian of the sultan's household — the tradition names him Michael, the sultan's tailor — obtained the martyr's body, and the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah III himself accompanied it for burial at the church of the Life-Giving Fountain (Zoodochos Pēgē). His memory was kept at once among the neomartyrs, and a service was composed in his honour.
Feast and commemoration
Auxentius is commemorated on January 25 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 7), the day of his martyrdom, together with Gregory the Theologian and the other saints of the day. He is honoured among the New Martyrs who suffered under the Ottoman rule, and is kept especially in the Greek tradition, in his native Epirus, and at Constantinople. He is not to be confused with the ancient Auxentius of Bithynia, the fifth-century hermit of the mountain near Chalcedon, kept February 14.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyr Auxentius, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee our God; for possessed of Thy might, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of demons. By his supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Auxentius is depicted as a young layman-martyr in the dress of an eighteenth-century Greek of Constantinople, holding the cross of martyrdom and often the palm, sometimes shown with the wound of his blinded eye; his youthful, beardless or lightly bearded face marks him among the new martyrs. No securely identified icon is stored here; the saint wants an icon.