The Representative Male Neomartyrs

Four men of the Greek lands, each illustrating a path and a world: St. Michael Paknanas, the gardener of Athens beheaded in 1771; St. Theodore of Byzantium, martyred at Mytilene in 1795; St. Constantine of Hydra, the returned apostate martyred at Rhodes in 1800; and St. George of Ioannina, the young stable-hand accused of having been a Muslim, martyred at Ioannina in 1838 — one of the latest of the neomartyrs. Each name and date is pinned to its source; the accounts follow the tradition that transmits them.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (neomartyrs of the Ottoman period)

St. Michael Paknanas, the Gardener of Athens (d. 1771)

Michael Paknanas (Michaïl Paknanas) was a young gardener of Athens, born about 1753 in the Thiseio quarter beneath the ancient city, who was arrested during the Ottoman administration and pressed to embrace Islam (Michael Paknanas, life in the synaxaristic tradition; summarized in Sanidopoulos, “Saint Michael Paknanas the Gardener from Athens (+1771),” johnsanidopoulos.com; and the Athenian local memory). Refusing repeatedly, and offered his life if he would convert, he answered that he would die a Christian; he was tortured and then beheaded on 9 July 1771, tradition holds at a pillar near the Temple of Olympian Zeus, where a later inscription recorded the date of his beheading (synaxaristic tradition; Sanidopoulos, “The Home and Garden of Saint Michael Paknanas”). His feast is kept on 30 June, with the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles, though he suffered on 9 July. He is the type of the ordinary layman — a working man of the occupied capital of the ancients — for whom the offer of life at the price of Christ was simply not an offer; and he has become, in modern Athens, a beloved local patron (his memory kept at the place of his martyrdom). The details of his torments come to us through the devotional tradition and are reported as such (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

St. Theodore of Byzantium (d. 1795)

Theodore the New Martyr, called of Byzantium (i.e., of Constantinople) from his origin, was martyred at Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in 1795, commemorated on 17 February (synaxaristic tradition; the acta in the neomartyrological collections; Vaporis, Witnesses for Christ, SVS Press, 2000). His life belongs to the pattern of the man who had, in some manner, come to be reckoned a Muslim and who then confessed Christ and was required, on pain of death, to make good the profession of Islam he would not make. Theodore’s acta, like most of the eighteenth-century lives, descends through the neomartyrological compilations gathered into the Neon Martyrologion (see The Neon Martyrologion); the date and place are firm in the tradition, the circumstantial detail is transmitted devotionally and pinned here to that tradition.

St. Constantine of Hydra (d. 1800)

Constantine of Hydra (Konstantinos the Hydriote), from the island of Hydra, is the type of the returned apostate — the first of the three paths (see The Word and the Three Paths). Having in his youth embraced Islam, he repented and resolved to confess Christ openly and to die for the return; he was martyred at Rhodes on 14 November 1800, on which day he is commemorated (synaxaristic tradition; the acta in the neomartyrological collections; Vaporis, Witnesses for Christ, 2000). His case is one of those that most sharply poses the question treated in Section 06: a man who, having fallen, deliberately sought out the death the law prescribed for his return, and who was — in the practice of the age — often prepared for that death by a spiritual father before he went to it (see The Elders and the Training and The Canonical Caution).

St. George of Ioannina (d. 1838)

The best-documented of the four, and one of the latest of all the neomartyrs, is George of Ioannina (Georgios of Ioannina, also “of Grevena”). He was born about 1808 in the village of Tsourchli (in the Grevena district of Ottoman Epirus/Macedonia) and worked as a young stable-hand and groom in Ioannina, in the service of a household connected to the Ottoman garrison (life in the synaxaristic and modern accounts; Sanidopoulos, “Life and Veneration of Saint George the New Martyr of Ioannina (+1838),” johnsanidopoulos.com; Pemptousia, “New Martyr George of Ioannina (+1838)”). Because he had lived among Muslims, worn a servant’s garb, and was betrothed to a Christian woman, he was accused of having become a Muslim and of apostatizing back to Christianity — the second path, the false accusation (see The Word and the Three Paths). Brought before the authorities and asked “What are you?”, he is said to have crossed himself and answered, “I am a Christian and I shall die a Christian; I bow before my Christ and my Lady the Theotokos” (words transmitted in the acta and the modern Lives; reported as the tradition attests them, §3.5). He was hanged at Ioannina on 17 January 1838, on which day he is commemorated.

George’s late date makes him a bridge to the modern world: he died only a few years after the Kingdom of Greece had won its independence, in territories still under Ottoman rule, and his cult has flourished in modern Greece — he was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and has been honored as a patron of the Greek Presidential Guard (the Evzones) (Sanidopoulos, “Life and Veneration of Saint George the New Martyr of Ioannina”; and the modern Greek veneration; see The Feast and the Cult). His story also illustrates, with unusual clarity, how a man could be swept toward martyrdom not by any act of his own but by the legal looseness at the conversion-boundary described in The Apostasy Law and the Count.

What the Four Show Together

The four lives, taken together, refuse a single template. Paknanas is a working layman pressed to convert and refusing; Theodore a confessor of the islands; Constantine a fallen man who returned and sought the death of his repentance; George a servant destroyed by a false accusation he would not confirm with a lie. They span from 1771 to 1838, from Athens to Lesbos to Rhodes to Epirus. What unites them is not a nation or a class but the point at which each stood: the demand to deny Christ, or to confirm a denial, and the “no” that cost a life — the same “no” the ancient martyrs made, which is exactly the claim the word neomartyr is meant to press (Vaporis, Witnesses for Christ, 2000; and the theology of The Word and the Three Paths). The Slavic and Balkan martyrs of the next file make the same point across a further boundary, of language and people.

References

Nikodemos the Hagiorite, St., and St. Makarios of Corinth, comps. Neon Martyrologion. Venice, 1799. (The eighteenth-century acta, including Theodore and Constantine.)
Pemptousia. “New Martyr George of Ioannina (+1838).” pemptousia.com, 2015. (Used to locate George’s birth c. 1808, his trade, and his martyrdom of 17 January 1838; underlying claims in the acta and synaxaristic tradition.)
Sanidopoulos, John. “Saint Michael Paknanas the Gardener from Athens (+1771)”; “Life and Veneration of Saint George the New Martyr of Ioannina (+1838).” johnsanidopoulos.com. (Used to locate the dates and circumstances; underlying claims traced to the synaxaristic tradition.)
Vaporis, Nomikos Michael. Witnesses for Christ: Orthodox Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period, 1437–1860. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000. (The standard English gathering of the acta.)