Euthymius, Ignatius and Acacius of Athos

The making of new martyrs on the Holy Mountain

The last Ottoman century produced a distinct Athonite institution: the deliberate formation of candidates for martyrdom. Many Greeks and Balkan Slavs had been drawn or forced into Islam, often as boys; those who repented could not be reconciled openly, since apostasy from Islam was a capital offence, and a considerable number of them made their way to the Holy Mountain, were received back by chrismation, tonsured, and then — if the desire persisted and the elders judged it genuine — trained for a public confession of Christ in a Muslim city, whose outcome was certain. The training was a monastic ascesis: fasting, prayer, the Jesus prayer, the reading of the New Martyrologion of Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite, and repeated testing by the elder of the candidate's motive, to exclude despair, vainglory or mere impatience with life.

The elder of the Skete of Saint Anne named Acacius was the most famous of these directors, and with him worked Nicephorus of Chios, then living at Iveron, who wrote the services and the accounts of the martyrs, and the monk Gregory, who travelled with them to Constantinople, stood by them, and brought back their remains. The three martyrs commemorated on May 1 are the group formed by these men in the years 1814–1816.

Euthymius (†22 March 1814)

He was born Eleutherius, at Demitsana in the Peloponnese, of parents named Panagiotes and Maria. He set out on the monastic life young, but in Constantinople he faltered and denied Christ, accepting Islam and the name Reschid. Remorse followed almost at once; he escaped from the city with the help of the Russian embassy, reached the Holy Mountain, was received back into the Church by chrismation, and was tonsured with the name Euthymius. Reading the New Martyrologion, he conceived the desire to undo his denial by confession, and after the elders had tested him he was blessed to go.

He left for Constantinople with the monk Gregory on 19 March 1814, and on Palm Sunday, 22 March, he dressed in Turkish clothes, went to the palace of the Grand Vizier, and there declared before the officials that he was an Orthodox Christian and wished to die for Christ, renouncing Mohammed and the religion of Islam. He was beaten, imprisoned and tortured, and persisted; the vizier ordered his execution. The executioner's strokes, the account says, did not take effect, and he at last cut the martyr's throat. Euthymius died about noon. His relics were ransomed and taken to the Holy Mountain.

Ignatius (†October 1814)

He was born John, in the village of Eski Zagora — Stara Zagora, in the Trnovo region of Bulgaria. He came to the Holy Mountain and was tonsured at the Skete of Saint Anne, where the elder Acacius directed him with a simple rule of prayer and the daily reading of the Gospel. Fired by the memory of Euthymius, he asked and received the elder's blessing to go to Constantinople and confess Christ.

There he presented himself deliberately before the kadi, the Muslim judge, and declared his faith; threatened with torture and death he answered that he would never deny Christ. He was condemned and hanged at the place called Daktyloporta in Constantinople, in October 1814 — his own day in the Greek books being October 8. His body was left hanging three days; Christians ransomed it and buried it on the island of Prote in the Sea of Marmara, whence it was afterwards brought to Athos.

Acacius (†1 May 1816)

He was born Athanasius, at Neochorion in Macedonia near Thessalonica, of poor Bulgarian parents. Like Euthymius he had fallen away from the faith, and like him he came to the Holy Mountain to repent. He was received at Iveron, where Father Nicephorus — Nicephorus of Chios — undertook his preparation, and he was given to the elder Acacius of the Skete of Saint Anne, who tonsured him with his own name.

He went up to Constantinople with the monk Gregory, and there publicly renounced Islam and confessed Christ before the Ottoman authorities. He was condemned and beheaded at Parmak Kapi at six o'clock in the evening on 1 May 1816. Pious Christians ransomed his body from the Turks, and Father Gregory carried it back to the Holy Mountain; the relics were received at Iveron and buried in the church there dedicated to Saints Ignatius and Euthymius — the two who had gone before him — so that the three lay together. The heads of all three martyrs are kept and venerated at the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Athos.

A letter written by Acacius on 27 April 1816, four days before his death, fixes the year against the variant reading 1815 found in older notices.

Veneration

The three were venerated immediately. Nicephorus of Chios composed their service and their account; the church at Iveron was raised over the relics; and the Athonite houses kept their memory jointly on May 1, the day of the last of them, so that the group has a single feast even though each martyr also has his own date (Euthymius March 22, Ignatius October 8, Acacius May 1). Their names stand in the long roll of neomartyres whose witness sustained Greek and Bulgarian Christians through the last Ottoman generation, and their martyrdoms fall in the years immediately before the risings of 1821, in which the Holy Mountain and the Church of Chios both suffered terribly.