Elias Ardounis
The Holy New Venerable-Martyr Elias Ardounis of Kalamata
New Martyr · Venerable Martyr · b. 17th century, Kalamata — d. 1686
Commemorated 31 January — Martyrdom by fire at Kalamata
Elias Ardounis (†1686) was a new-martyr of the Ottoman period from Kalamata in the Peloponnese. A barber by trade and a man respected by Turk and Christian alike, he was drawn — half in jest, in a heated exchange over the taxation of Christians — into a public profession of Islam, and, taken at his word, found himself an apostate. Stricken with remorse, he fled to Mount Athos, was tonsured a monk, and after eight years of penitent tears resolved to wash out his denial with his blood. Returning to Kalamata, he confessed Christ openly before the very men before whom he had denied him; and after beatings, imprisonment and torture he was burned alive just outside the town on January 31, 1686. He is venerated among the neomartyrs under the Turkish yoke.
The barber of Kalamata and his fall
Elias, surnamed Ardounis, was a barber in Kalamata in the Peloponnese, and a man of such shrewd good sense and knowledge of affairs that even the Turkish officials of the town esteemed him and sought his conversation. It was this familiarity that undid him. When some of the Turks were with him, Elias — moved by concern for his fellow Christians — urged them to lighten the taxation that weighed on the Christian population, warning that many, crushed by the burden, would be tempted to deny their faith for relief. The talk grew heated, and Elias, carried away, said — half in jest — that he himself might be inclined to turn Turk for the sake of a fez. One of the company took him instantly at his word, handed him the headgear, and Elias, entangled by his own rash tongue, made a profession of Islam before the judge. So a careless word made him, in the eyes of the law, an apostate from Christ.
Repentance and the return
Almost at once Elias was overwhelmed with remorse for what he had done. Unable to bear his fall, he fled secretly to Mount Athos, the refuge and school of so many of the neomartyrs, and there gave himself to weeping over his denial. He was tonsured a monk, and for some eight years he laboured on the Holy Mountain in penitence and prayer. But the memory of his public apostasy gave him no rest, and he came at last to the resolve that marks the neomartyr: that a public denial of Christ must be undone by a public confession, whatever it should cost. With the counsel and blessing of the fathers he set out to return to Kalamata, to stand before the very men before whom he had denied his Lord and confess him openly.
Martyrdom
Back in Kalamata, Elias confessed Christ before the Turkish authorities and renounced the Islam into which he had been trapped. He was seized, and every means was used to turn him back: flattery, threats, beating, imprisonment, and torture. He held firm through all of it, and the judges at last condemned him to death by fire. He was led out to a place just beyond the town — the tradition names the spot Velioura — and burned alive on the 31st of January, 1686 (some accounts give 1685). The tradition adds that when he was cast onto the pyre of green wood he was suffocated by the smoke before the flames could touch him, and that his hair, his beard, and his monastic cassock were found untouched by the fire — a sign taken for the seal of his martyrdom.
In the eighteenth century the Christians of Kalamata built a small church over the place of his suffering; but because Elias was, in Ottoman law, a condemned criminal, they were not permitted to dedicate it in his name, and so gave it the name of the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste — under whose title the memory of the neomartyr's death was quietly preserved.
Feast and commemoration
Elias Ardounis is kept on January 31 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 13), the day of his martyrdom. He is also commemorated, with the other neomartyrs, on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearing Women (the third Sunday of Pascha), the movable synaxis of the New Martyrs in the Greek tradition. His cult is Greek, centred on Kalamata and the Peloponnese, and on Mount Athos where he became a monk. The year of his death is given as 1686 in most accounts and 1685 in some.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Having washed away by penitence the denial into which thou wast ensnared, O Elias, thou didst return to confess Christ before them that had received thy fall, and by fire thou wast made a whole burnt-offering unto God; wherefore, O new-martyr, entreat that our souls be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Elias is depicted as a monk-martyr: a monk in the schema and mantle, bearing the cross of martyrdom, and — proper to him — often shown at the pyre, amid the flames of his burning. As a saint of the seventeenth century whose images are the work of recent iconographers, no public-domain or free-licensed icon has been identified, and none is stored here. (Wanted: a free-licensed or public-domain icon of the neomartyr Elias Ardounis of Kalamata.)