Gregory of Crete
Our Venerable Father Gregory of Crete
Venerable · b. 760, Crete — d. c. 820, Cape Akritas (Bithynia)
Commemorated 5 January — Repose at the monastery of Cape Akritas — kept on the Eve of the Theophany
Gregory of Crete (760 – c. 820) was a monk of the iconoclast age whose long wandering carried him from his native island through Seleucia, Jerusalem, and Rome to a monastery on Cape Akritas on the Sea of Marmara, whence his byname "of Akritas." Raised by pious parents on Crete, he left home as a young man to keep his Orthodox faith intact amid the persecution of the icons, endured hardship and (in Jerusalem) fierce affliction, and came at last under the wing of Michael, bishop of Synnada, who settled him in the Akritas monastery. There he accomplished great ascetic labours and reposed about the year 820. He is kept on January 5, the Eve of the Theophany.
Gregory was born on Crete in the year 760, of devout parents who raised him in the faith. His life falls in the century of Iconoclasm, and the tradition presents his early travels as a flight to preserve his Orthodoxy where the heresy pressed hardest. About the age of twenty he went to Seleucia and lived there in piety; then to Jerusalem, where he remained some twelve years, enduring — the notice says — grievous persecution. From the Holy Land he journeyed west to Rome and entered a monastery there. It was in these years that he became known to Saint Michael, bishop of Synnada (a noted confessor of the icons, commemorated May 23), who took Gregory with him and established him in a monastery on the Cape of Akritas, the promontory at the mouth of the Gulf of Nicomedia on the Sea of Marmara. There Gregory gave himself to great ascetic struggles and there he reposed, about the year 820. From the place of his repose he is surnamed "of Akritas."
Feast and commemoration
Gregory is commemorated on January 5 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 18), the Eve of the Theophany, his memory kept with the Forefeast within the strict-fast vigil. The Greek synaxaria style him "of Akritas" from his monastery; the OCA and Slavonic usage call him "of Crete" from his birthplace — the same saint under two bynames.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
By the streams of thy tears thou didst cultivate the barrenness of the desert, and by thy groanings from the depths thou didst bear fruit a hundredfold in labours, and becamest a luminary shining upon the world by thy miracles, O our venerable Father Gregory. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Gregory is depicted as a monk in the dark habit, bearded, in the settled type of the venerable ascetics. No storable image identified specifically to him has been found.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the several other saints named Gregory of the calendar — among them the Hieromartyr Gregory V of Constantinople (†1821) and the great Gregory of Nyssa (kept January 10) — nor with the martyr Andrew of Crete or the hymnographer Andrew of Crete. This Gregory is the ninth-century ascetic "of Akritas."