John of Gothia
Our Father among the Saints John the Confessor, Bishop of the Goths
Bishop · Confessor · d. c. 791, at Amastris in Paphlagonia
Commemorated 19 May — Second commemoration, kept in the Slavonic calendars and by the OCA, 26 June — His received memorial, kept in the Greek and Slavonic calendars
John, bishop of the Goths of the Crimea, is one of the very few named figures through whom the history of the Gothic Church in the Crimea can be seen at all. Born at Partenit under the mountain of Ayu-Dag on the southern Crimean coast, he was consecrated bishop about 758 — not in the Empire, where the hierarchy was then iconoclast under Constantine V Copronymus, but in Georgia, which had kept clear of the heresy — and governed the Gothic see of Doros in the Crimean mountains. In 787 he led his people in a revolt against the Khazars, who then held the peninsula: the rising took the fortress of Doros and the mountain passes, but it collapsed within the year, and John was imprisoned at Phoulloi. He escaped across the Black Sea to Amastris in Paphlagonia, lived there some four years, and died there about 791, having foretold his own death within forty days of hearing that the Khazar ruler was dead. His relics were carried home to Partenit, to the church of the Apostles Peter and Paul which he had built at the foot of Ayu-Dag.
Partenit and the Gothic Church
The Crimean Goths were the remnant of the Gothic peoples who had not moved west in the migrations, settled in the mountainous south of the peninsula and Christian since late antiquity; their language survived into the sixteenth century and their bishopric — later a metropolitanate — appears in the Byzantine lists as Gothia, with its seat at Doros (the fortress on the plateau afterwards called Mangup). It was a frontier Church, always between empires.
John was born at Partenit, a coastal settlement in the shadow of Ayu-Dag ("Bear Mountain"), to parents whose names the Life gives as Leon and Photina and who had prayed long for a child. He was given to asceticism from boyhood. As a young man he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and remained in the Holy Land three years, visiting the holy places, before returning to his own country — an education which mattered, because it put him outside the reach of the imperial religious policy of his own day.
Consecrated in Georgia, against the iconoclasts
The decisive event of his life was the iconoclast crisis. Under Constantine V Copronymus (741–775) the see of Gothia lost its bishop, and the Life presents the loss as a defection: the man was drawn away from his flock — the Byzantine lists show a bishop of Gothia promoted at this period to a metropolitan see in Thrace — and the Gothic Christians, unwilling to receive an iconoclast in his place, asked John to be their bishop.
John would not be ordained by the iconoclast hierarchy. He travelled instead to Georgia (Iberia), where the Church had not accepted the condemnation of the icons, and was consecrated there — the date usually given is 758. It is a striking piece of eighth-century church politics: a congregation on the northern edge of the Byzantine world reaching past its own patriarchate to a Caucasian Church in order to obtain an Orthodox bishop, and a bishop accepting a canonically awkward consecration rather than communion with the iconoclasts. It is on this ground that he is honoured as a confessor.
Returning, he governed the Church of Doros and built, at Partenit beneath Ayu-Dag, a monastery church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, whose ruins were still identifiable in the modern period.
The revolt of 787
The Crimea in John's episcopate was under the domination of the Khazars, whose tudun (governor) held Doros with a garrison. In 787 the Gothic population rose against them, and the Life puts John at the head of the rising: the Goths expelled the tudun and his garrison from Doros and held the mountain passes, which for a mountain people was the whole of a defensive strategy.
It did not last a year. The Khazars returned in force, the passes were lost, and the rising was put down; seventeen of the leaders are said to have been executed. John himself was taken and imprisoned at Phoulloi (Fully), another of the Crimean Gothic settlements. From there he escaped — the Life does not explain how — crossed the Black Sea, and took refuge at Amastris on the Paphlagonian coast, where he lived about four years.
Repose and relics
At Amastris he heard that the Khazar ruler whose power had broken his people was dead. His recorded response is the one saying of his that has come down: "After forty days I shall go to be judged with him before Christ the Saviour." He died on the fortieth day, about the year 790 or 791.
His body was carried back across the sea to his own Partenit, and laid in the monastery church of the Apostles Peter and Paul which he had built at the foot of Ayu-Dag — so that the Gothic Church buried at home the bishop who had died in exile for it. The site remained a place of veneration; the memory of the "bishop John" was still attached to it when the Crimean Gothic Christianity had otherwise almost disappeared.
Feast and commemoration
His received memorial is June 26; May 19 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 1) is the second commemoration, kept in the Slavonic calendars and by the OCA, which lists him among the saints of this day between the Vologda venerables and the Egyptian martyrs. In the Crimea his veneration is local and ancient, bound to Partenit and to the ruined church under Ayu-Dag; in modern Ukrainian and Russian usage he is honoured as an enlightener of the Crimean land. No proper service has been located, and he is sung with the common of a hierarch and confessor. On the fixed calendar this day always falls within the Pentecostarion, whose movable hymns take precedence.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch and confessor)
O God of our fathers, who dealest with us ever according to Thy gentleness: take not Thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of Thy hierarch John guide our life in peace; for thou, O holy father, wast a rule of faith to thy people, and didst not bow before the enemies of the holy icons.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
John is painted as a hierarch of the eighth century: middle-aged or elderly, dark- or grey-bearded, in phelonion and omophorion, blessing with the right hand and holding the Gospel-book in the left, sometimes with the epigonation of a bishop. Where the confessor is intended, he holds or is accompanied by an icon — the attribute the Church gives to those who suffered under iconoclasm — and where the Crimean setting is intended, the mountain of Ayu-Dag and the church of the Holy Apostles at Partenit are shown behind him. Modern Crimean and Ukrainian icons of him, painted since the revival of his veneration, are numerous.
No pre-1900 image of him has been located for this collection. Wikimedia Commons carries only a photograph of a modern memorial to him at Partenit and views of the church there, neither of which is an icon; and the Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for a minor saint of the fixed year, covers only September to February and so cannot serve a May or June commemoration.
Disputed questions
- The two feasts, and which is principal. The Greek tradition and the modern reference literature give 26 June as his memorial; the Slavonic calendars and the OCA keep him on both 19 May and 26 June, and the OCA's own entry names the two days together. Which day is the repose and which the translation of the relics is not stated by the sources consulted here. This corpus enters 26 June as primary, as the more widely attested day, and 19 May as a secondary commemoration, and flags the question rather than inventing a reason for the second date.
- The Seventh Ecumenical Council. John's episcopate spans the year of Nicaea II (787) and his whole standing is that of an opponent of iconoclasm, and it is often assumed that he took part in the restoration of the icons under the empress Irene. The sources consulted for this entry do not establish that he sat at the council or subscribed its acts, and the entry does not assert it.
- The date of the consecration (758) and of the death (790 or 791) rest on the chronology of the Life as reconstructed by modern historians, not on a document; the revolt of 787 is the one securely dated event.
- Not to be confused with the Gothic martyrs of the fourth-century persecution beyond the Danube — Sabbas the Goth (April 12), Nicetas the Goth (September 15), the Twenty-six Martyrs of Gotthia (March 26) — who belong to a different Gothic people in a different country four centuries earlier, nor with any of the numerous other bishops named John.