John of Monagria
The Holy Venerable-Martyr John, Abbot of the Monastery of Monagria
Venerable Martyr · d. 761
Commemorated 4 June — Drowned in the sea, sewn into a sack
John was abbot of the monastery of Monagria, and was put to death by being sewn into a sack and thrown into the sea — the standard penalty of the iconoclast persecution for monks who would not surrender the holy icons. Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, who preserves the notice, gives no more than this: the office, the manner of death, and the crown of martyrdom. The date usually attached to him is 761, in the reign of Constantine V Copronymus, and the monastery is placed on the Asian shore near Cyzicus. A portion of his skull is kept at the monastery of Panagia Amasgou in Cyprus. He is commemorated on June 4.
What the record contains
The whole of the transmitted account is two clauses of Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite: that John was abbot (ἡγούμενος) of the monastery of Monagria, and that they put him into a sack and cast him into the sea, and so he received the crown of martyrdom. There is no passion, no interrogation, no named persecutor, and in the Greek notice no year.
Everything else comes from the setting. The synaxarial and English lists place his death in 761, which puts him squarely in the first and fiercest phase of the iconoclast persecution under Constantine V (741–775), the emperor the Orthodox called Copronymus, in the years around the iconoclast council of Hieria (754) and the campaign against the monasteries that followed it. Drowning in a weighted sack is precisely the death that the sources of that persecution record for monks and for the abbots of monasteries — a punishment that left no body to be venerated and no grave to become a shrine, chosen deliberately against the cult of relics that iconoclasm was attacking. That the manner of his death is the only thing remembered of him is therefore itself evidence of what he died for.
Monagria
Monagria (Μοναγρία) is placed by the English lists near Cyzicus — that is, on the southern shore of the Propontis, in the Hellespontine country of north-west Asia Minor, a region thick with monasteries in the eighth century and one of the heartlands of monastic resistance to iconoclasm. The sea into which he was thrown, on this identification, is the Propontis or the gulf of Cyzicus.
A rival identification arises from the relic: a portion of the saint's skull is preserved at the monastery of the Panagia Amasgou at Monagri, near Limassol in Cyprus — and the Cypriot village of Monagri is an obvious candidate for the Monagria of the notice. The presence of the relic is a real argument, though relics travel and the Cypriot house could as easily have received the head of a Bithynian abbot as have been his own monastery. The two identifications are recorded here without preference.
Feast and commemoration
June 4 (church date; New Calendar civil June 4, Old Calendar civil June 17), kept with Saint Metrophanes of Constantinople and the sisters of Lazarus. He is a Greek synaxarion commemoration, transmitted by Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite in the Synaxaristes and thence into the Greek calendars and the English lists that depend on them; the Russian and Antiochian day-lists for June 4 do not name him. In Cyprus, at the monastery of the Panagia Amasgou near Monagri, his memory is local and attached to the relic of his skull. He is commemorated at the simple rank with the common of a venerable-martyr. The Greek synaxarion sets over his notice a distich turning on the word place:
Though a sack should hold him, though the place of the deep should hide him, the place of Heaven has received John.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a venerable-martyr)
Having schooled thyself in the monastic life, and being crowned thereafter with the martyr's contest, thou wast sunk in the depths of the sea, O John, and didst rise unhindered to the heights of heaven; and now, standing before Christ with the venerable and with the martyrs, intercede that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
John is painted as a monastic and as a martyr at once: an elder or middle-aged monk in the dark mantiya and cowl or in the great schema, holding the cross of the martyrs rather than the scroll of the ascetics, and sometimes with the abbot's staff. His distinguishing attribute is the manner of his death, and where the martyrdom is narrated he is shown bound or sewn into a sack — a shapeless bundle with the head or feet protruding — being carried by soldiers to the side of a boat, or already sinking in the water while his soul is received above; the sea is indicated by the conventional dark wave-band. In Cypriot usage at the Panagia Amasgou he may be shown holding the reliquary of his own head.
No pre-1900 icon of him has been located for this collection. He is a saint of a bare synaxarion notice with no proper service, and the Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for such a figure, covers only September to February and cannot serve a June commemoration.
Disputed questions
- Where was Monagria? Near Cyzicus in Asia Minor, as the standard lists have it; or Monagri in Cyprus, where the relic of his skull is kept at the monastery of the Panagia Amasgou. The Greek notice does not say, and the argument from the relic cuts both ways.
- When did he die? The conventional 761 rests on the assignment of the drowning to the persecution of Constantine V, which the manner of death makes very likely but which no source states. Saint Nikodemos gives no date at all.
- Why he suffered. The notice does not say he died for the icons; it says he was drowned in a sack. The inference is from the period, the office and the punishment, and it is the inference the calendars themselves make in styling him ὁσιομάρτυς, venerable-martyr — a monastic who died for the faith. It is recorded here as an inference and not as a transmitted fact.
- Not to be confused with the many other monastic Johns of the calendar, and in particular not with the confessors of the same persecution commemorated on other days; nor is he the John of Monagria who appears in some lists conflated with abbots of the Bithynian houses of Mount Olympus.