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Martyrs of Iviron

The Holy Iberite Venerable-Martyrs of the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos, slain by the Latins

Venerable Martyr · Martyr · d. between 1259 and 1280

Commemorated 13 May — Memory of the monks of Iviron drowned and enslaved for refusing the Union of Lyons

The Iberite venerable-martyrs are the Georgian and Greek monks of the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos who were put to death for refusing the Union of Lyons — the submission to Rome accepted by the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos and proclaimed on 6 June 1274 — and the papal and imperial pressure that followed it. Required to accept the Latin doctrine and the pope's obedience, the brotherhood anathematised it instead. Nearly two hundred of the elder monks were driven aboard a ship like cattle and the ship was sunk with them in the deep; the younger and stronger were deported to Italy and sold as slaves. The sources give the date as 1259, or as a persecution running over four years from 1276 to 1280. They are commemorated on May 13 with the Georgian fathers of Iviron, and belong with the Twenty-six Martyrs of Zographou, burned in their tower in the same persecution.

The Union of Lyons

In the third quarter of the thirteenth century the restored Byzantine empire was fighting for its existence. Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259–1282), who had recovered Constantinople from the Latins in 1261, was threatened in the West by Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, who was assembling a crusade to take the city back. Michael's remedy was diplomatic: to obtain the intervention of the papacy — of Gregory X (1271–1276) and afterwards of John XXI (1276–1277) — to restrain Charles; and the price of that intervention was the submission of the Eastern Church.

The union was proclaimed on 6 June 1274 at the Second Council of Lyons. It engaged the Orthodox to the Latin confession and to the obedience of the pope; and it was rejected almost universally by the clergy, the monks and the people of the empire. The Greek synaxaristes states the consequence bluntly: the emperor's act "raised an internal war which lasted until 1281." The enforcement of the union was entrusted to the unionist patriarch John Bekkos and to imperial officers, and there was no part of the Byzantine world where enforcement met a harder refusal than the Holy Mountain.

Athos under the Latins

Between 1259 and 1306 the pope's military forces, in concert with the imperial authority, descended on Athos repeatedly. The Mountain has kept the memory of these years as its own persecution, and its martyrologies from that period are numerous: at Zographou twenty-two monks and four laymen were burned alive in the tower; at Vatopedi the abbot and his companions were, by the Athonite tradition, drowned and hanged; the protos of the Mountain was hanged at Karyes; and at Iviron the largest single company of all was destroyed.

The drowning and the selling

The demand made at Iviron was the standard one: to accept the Catholic doctrine and to enter the obedience of the pope. The brotherhood — Georgians and Greeks together, for the house had long been mixed — refused, and did more than refuse: the account says that the monks censured the Latin errors and anathematised the Catholic doctrine to the faces of those who came to impose it.

The reprisal was made in two parts, and its cold administrative logic is the most terrible thing about it. The elders — those too old to be of value — numbering close to two hundred, were goaded like animals onto a ship, which was then taken out and sunk in the deep with all of them aboard. The younger and healthier monks were carried off to Italy and sold as slaves. The monastery itself was pillaged. No roll of names survives: the company is anonymous, as the companies of the great persecutions usually are, and is commemorated as a body.

Veneration

Iviron has kept their memory since, and the Georgian Church honours them among the martyrs of its own nation on the Holy Mountain, on May 13, the day of the Georgian fathers of Iviron — John, Euthymius, George and Gabriel — so that the founders of the house and those who died for its faith are commemorated together. The Orthodox Church in America carries them on the same day as "Martyrs killed by the Latins at the Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos."

Feast and commemoration

May 13 (church date; New Calendar civil May 13, Old Calendar civil May 26), with the Georgian fathers of Iviron. They have no proper service of their own in the received Menaion, and the common of a company of martyrs is sung with them; at Iviron their memory is kept locally, and in the Georgian Orthodox Church they are honoured among the martyrs of the nation. Because the date of Pascha moves, May 13 falls in some years within the Paschal season and in others after Pentecost, and no fixed seasonal note belongs to the day. Their memory is also gathered into the synaxis of all the venerable fathers who shone forth on the Holy Mountain, kept on the Second Sunday after Pentecost.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a company of martyrs)

O holy martyrs, who fought the good fight and received your crowns, entreat the Lord that He have mercy on our souls.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Two hundred elders were given to the deep, and the young were sold into a strange land, yet the house of the Iberians did not bow to the errors of the Latins; wherefore, O venerable martyrs, the Holy Mountain glorifies you, and Christ has crowned you.

Iconography

Being an anonymous company, the Iberite martyrs are painted as a crowd rather than as portraits: ranks of monastics in the dark mantle and analavos of the great schema, bearded and of various ages, holding crosses and grouped behind one or two figures in front — the standard type of the Athonite martyr-companies, and the same type used for the martyrs of Zographou and Vatopedi. The narrative scene proper to them is the sinking of the ship: the crowded vessel going down in the open sea with the monks at prayer, the Latin soldiery on the shore or in a second boat, and the monastery of Iviron on the headland behind — an image of unusual power that has been painted at Iviron and in Georgian churches, sometimes paired with the selling of the young monks in an Italian market. Their feast being in May, the Menologion of Basil II (September–February) is no source for them, and no pre-1900 image of this company has been located for this collection; none is stored.

Disputed questions

  • The date: 1259, or 1276–1280? The sources give both. One tradition sets the destruction of the Iviron brotherhood in 1259, the first year of Michael VIII's reign — which is before the Union of Lyons and therefore before the motive the same accounts assign; the other, and the one that fits the narrative, records the Georgian monks of the Holy Mountain as subject to the Latin persecutions over four years, from 1276 to 1280, that is, in the years immediately following the union and contemporary with the burning at Zographou. The frontmatter therefore gives the range between 1259 and 1280 rather than a false precision. It is also possible that Iviron suffered more than once in the half-century of Latin pressure and that the two dates preserve two different episodes.
  • Numbers. "Nearly two hundred" elders drowned is the transmitted figure. Athonite martyrologies of this period are not documentary, and the numbers in them are traditional; the figure is reported as it stands, without being defended.
  • The historical record. As with the Zographou martyrs, there is no contemporary documentary account of Michael VIII's measures on Athos independent of the Athonite tradition itself, and some modern historians treat the details of these martyrologies as later elaboration of a real persecution. That the persecution happened is not in doubt; the particulars of each monastery's losses rest on the memory of the houses concerned.
  • Not the founders. The Orthodox Church in America's May 13 list styles the founders of Iviron — John, George and Gabriel — "monastic martyrs," which the Greek synaxaria do not: those three are ὅσιοι, venerable, and died in peace two and a half centuries before this persecution. The martyr-title belongs to this anonymous thirteenth-century company, and the confusion of the two is noted in each of the founders' entries.
  • Not to be confused with the Twenty-six Martyrs of Zographou (kept September 22, with the anniversary of the burning on October 10), nor with the Vatopedi martyrs, though all belong to the same persecution and are often listed together as "the martyrs of the Holy Mountain under the Latins."

Sources

  1. Great Synaxaristes (Μέγας Συναξαριστής), May 13 — Οἱ Ἅγιοι Ἰβηρίτες Ὁσιομάρτυρες (consulted live): Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259–1282) seeking the intervention of Pope Gregory X (1271–1276) and afterwards John XXI (1276–1277) against Charles of Anjou; his adherence to the union of the two Churches proclaimed on 6 June 1274 at the Council of Lyons; and the internal war that followed until 1281, because both clergy and people rejected it.
  2. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, May 13 — Martyrs killed by the Latins at the Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos (consulted live): the Georgian and Greek monks; the demand for conversion to Catholicism and papal obedience and the monks' anathematising of it; nearly two hundred elderly monks goaded onto a ship which was sunk in the depths of the sea; the younger monks deported to Italy and sold as slaves; the alternative dates 1259 and 1276–1280; and the repeated devastation of Athos by papal forces between 1259 and 1306.
  3. The entry on the Twenty-six Martyrs of Zographou in this repository, and the Athonite tradition of the persecution under Michael VIII and the patriarch John Bekkos, for the wider context and for the historiographical caution recorded above.
  4. The entries on John, Euthymius, George and Gabriel the Iberians in this repository, for the identity of the monastery and the composition of the May 13 synaxis.