Equal-to-the-Apostles of the Enslaved
The counterpart to martyrdom: the preservation of a people. Where the neomartyr bore witness by dying, others preserved the faith of the enslaved by teaching and by hidden endurance. The first file treats St. Cosmas of Aetolia’s itinerant mission and his schools as the preservation counterpart to martyrdom — deferring his biography to his own collection and linking it. The second treats the crypto-Christians, the outwardly-Muslim, inwardly-Christian communities, handled with named scholarship and sober caution.
Tradition: Greek / Balkan Orthodox
Overview
Martyrdom is one way a persecuted Church endures; it is not the only way, and the neomartyrs are best understood beside the other ways. This section treats two of them, both of which shade into the neomartyr story at their edges.
The first file, Cosmas of Aetolia: The Preservation of a People, treats St. Cosmas of Aetolia (Kosmas the Aetolian, c. 1714–1779), the Equal-to-the-Apostles whose itinerant preaching and hundreds of schools sought to preserve the faith of the enslaved Greek lands — and who was himself hanged in 1779, so that he is at once the great preserver and a neomartyr. His full biography is deferred to his own collection; here his mission is treated as the preservation counterpart to martyrdom.
The second file, The Krypto-Christians, treats the phenomenon of crypto-Christianity — communities that professed Islam outwardly while keeping Christianity in secret — handled with the named scholarship (Vryonis, Minkov, Krstić, Malcolm) and with sober caution about its extent. The crypto-Christian who at last revealed his faith openly became, by that act, a neomartyr; the phenomenon is the hidden middle between apostasy and martyrdom.
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| cosmas-of-aetolia-the-preservation-of-a-people.md | St. Cosmas of Aetolia’s mission and schools as the preservation counterpart to martyrdom; biography deferred and linked; his own death as neomartyr |
| the-krypto-christians.md | Crypto-Christianity: the Stavriotes/Kromlides of Pontus, the Linobambakoi of Cyprus, the Kosovo case; the named scholarship; the crypto-Christian who becomes a neomartyr |
See Also
- Who the Neomartyrs Are — the martyrdom this section’s preservation stands beside
- St. Cosmas of Aetolia — the Equal-to-the-Apostles, biography deferred there
- The National Narrative and the Ottomanist Revision — where the extent of these phenomena is debated
References
- Vaporis, Nomikos Michael. Father Kosmas, the Apostle of the Poor. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1977.
- Vryonis, Speros, Jr. The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
- Krstić, Tijana. Contested Conversions to Islam. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.