Methodius of Lampe

The Holy New Hieromartyr Methodius Silygardos, Bishop of Lampe in Crete

Hieromartyr · New Martyr · Bishop · d. 9 July 1793, in Crete

Commemorated 9 July — Martyrdom under the Ottomans in Crete

Methodius, surnamed Silygardos, was a Cretan of the village of Vyzari in the province of Amari, who became abbot of the monastery of the Asomatoi (the Bodiless Powers) and then bishop of Lampe, one of the ancient sees of the island. He set himself against the violence of the Turkish authorities toward his flock, was arrested for it, and after long torture was put to death on 9 July 1793. His body was buried near the place of his martyrdom, at the little monastery of the Taxiarchs. He is a local Cretan commemoration: no notice of him stands in the received synaxaria, and no service in his honour has ever been found.

Vyzari, the Asomatoi, and the see of Lampe

Methodius came from Vyzari, a village of the Amari valley in the Rethymno district of central Crete, under Mount Ida; his family name was Silygardos. He entered the monastic life and rose to be abbot of the monastery of the Asomatoi — the great Amari house dedicated to the Bodiless Powers, one of the chief religious and educational centres of the region under Turkish rule and, later, one of the strongholds of Cretan resistance. From that abbacy he was raised to the episcopate as bishop of Lampe, the see covering the Amari and the mountain country toward the south coast, a suffragan bishopric of the Metropolis of Crete under the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Resistance and martyrdom

Crete in the last decades of the eighteenth century was governed harshly, and the local bishops stood between the Ottoman administration and a Christian population with no other advocate. Methodius is remembered for having opposed the violence of the Turks — resisting their outrages on his people rather than accommodating them, as the safety of his own person would have counselled. He was arrested for it, and, after many tortures, was put to death on 9 July 1793.

His relics were buried near the place of his martyrdom, at the small monastery of the Taxiarchs — the Archangels — and it is there that his memory has been kept.

Feast and commemoration

July 9 (church date; New Calendar civil July 9, Old Calendar civil July 22), a local commemoration of the Church of Crete and of the Greek day-calendars, kept with Pancratius of Taormina and the other saints of the day. Since no office was composed for him, the day is kept with the common of a hieromartyr, and in his own country at the monastery of the Taxiarchs where he lies.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hieromartyr)

As a sharer in the ways and a successor to the thrones of the Apostles, O divinely-inspired one, thou didst find in the practice of virtue the means to ascend to divine heights; rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst contend for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Methodius: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Iconography

Methodius is painted, where he is painted at all, as an eighteenth-century Greek hierarch: dark-bearded, in phelonion, crossed omophorion and episcopal mitre of the post-Byzantine Cretan shape, blessing and holding the Gospel, and — as a new martyr — with the cross of martyrdom in the right hand in place of the blessing. His images are confined to his own district and to the monastery of the Taxiarchs.

No storable image has been found. He died in 1793 and every icon of him is a modern Cretan work, painted since the revival of interest in the new martyrs of the island; the copyright in such a painting belongs to its iconographer and is unaffected by any licence attached to a photograph of it. Nothing pre-1900 has been located, and no image is stored.

Disputed questions

The absence of a synaxarion notice. The Greek sources that record him state plainly that this martyr is not mentioned in the synaxaria, and that no service of his has been found. His commemoration rests on the local Cretan memory of the see of Lampe and on the manuscript and archival record of the island, not on the received liturgical books. That is worth stating rather than glossing over: it places him among the many new martyrs of the Turkish period whose cult never passed beyond the district in which they died, and it is the reason nothing is transmitted of his trial, his examiners, or the particular occasion of his arrest.
Not to be confused with the other Methodii of the calendar — in particular Methodius of Constantinople (June 14), Methodius of Patara (June 20), or Methodius the Equal-to-the-Apostles — and, within the Cretan tradition, with the later hierarchs of Lampe of the same name.