Macarius of Kios
The Holy New Venerable-Martyr Macarius of Kios in Bithynia
Venerable Martyr · New Martyr · d. 1590
Commemorated 6 October — Martyrdom at Prousa
Macarius of Kios (†1590) was a new-martyr of the Ottoman period: born Manuel at Kios in Bithynia, he was betrayed to the Turkish judge at Prousa by his own apostate father, forcibly circumcised, and escaped to Mount Athos, where he was tonsured at the Skete of St Anne with the name Macarius. After twelve years of ascetic life he returned with a blessing to Prousa to confess before the same court the faith once forced from him; refusing Islam — "I will never leave the light to come into the darkness" — he was tortured, stoned, and beheaded on October 6, 1590. His skull was brought back to St Anne's Skete, and he is commemorated on the day of his contest.
Manuel was born at Kios (Kios/Gemlik) in Bithynia, on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, to Peter and Anthousa, and as a boy was apprenticed by his parents to a pious tailor to learn the trade. The family's story then took the turn that shaped his whole life: unexpectedly his father denied Christ, embraced Islam, and settled at Prousa (Bursa). When Manuel later came to Prousa, his father seized him and haled him before the judge with the false charge that the boy had promised to become a Turk. Manuel's denials availed nothing against his own father's testimony: the Turks beat him and circumcised him by force. The judgement of the Church in such cases was constant — a confession extorted by violence is no apostasy — but the young man carried the mark of it as a wound on his conscience.
After a few days he contrived to flee, and made his way to Mount Athos, to the Skete of St Anne, the great nest of the hesychasts on the south-western flank of the peninsula, which in the Turkish centuries became a nursery of new-martyrs: there he was tonsured a monk with the name Macarius. For twelve years he laboured in the ascetic life. Then, following the pattern by which the Athonite elders of the age prepared penitents of forced conversion for the supreme witness — testing the desire, and sending the athlete out with prayer — he received the blessing to go and confess Christ where Christ had been denied in his name. Travelling by way of Constantinople, he reached Prousa, where he was recognised, arrested, and brought to the tribunal.
There he confessed himself a Christian and, in his recorded answer, turned the court's demand on its head: "That I should deny my true faith and believe your false one — that I will never do; for I will not leave the light to come into the darkness." He was fearfully tortured; finally, after a savage stoning, he was beheaded on October 6, 1590. His skull (kara) was afterwards recovered and brought to the Skete of St Anne on the Holy Mountain, where it is kept among the skete's relics of its martyrs.
Feast and commemoration
October 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 19), the day of his martyrdom, alongside the feast of the Apostle Thomas which dominates the day. He is kept on the Greek calendar (the Great Synaxaristes and the Menaion synaxarion notice transmit him) and on the OCA calendar; the Russian day-lists consulted live for 2026 do not include him. At the Skete of St Anne he is honoured among the skete's own company of new-martyrs.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a martyr)
Thy martyr, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No pre-modern icon of Macarius has been identified; his veneration was local to the Holy Mountain and Bithynia through the centuries when icons of him might have been painted, and new-martyrs of the Turkish period are in any case sparsely represented before the nineteenth century. He would be depicted as an Athonite monk in schema, bearing the martyr's cross, the instruments of his end — the stones and the sword — sometimes shown; in group icons of the Athonite new-martyrs he stands among the company of the Skete of St Anne.
Disputed questions
- Styling. The Greek synaxaria style him "the new venerable-martyr" (νέος ὁσιομάρτυς), joining his monastic state to his martyrdom; the OCA calendar styles him "Monastic Martyr Macarius of St Anne's Skete, Mount Athos." Both usages are recorded in this entry's classification.
- Not to be confused with the many other saints Macarius of the calendar — among them Macarius the Great of Egypt (January 19), Macarius of Alexandria (January 19), and the martyr Macarius commemorated with Eudoxius and Zeno (September 6) — nor with the other Athonite new-martyrs of his name, such as Macarius the disciple of Niphon (kept with him on June 14 in Athonite use).