Veneration and Legacy
The neomartyrs in the Church’s worship and memory. The first file treats the feasts — the collective Synaxis of the New Martyrs on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, for which St. Nikodemos composed a common service, and the individual commemorations — and the cult: relics, icons, shrines, and the neomartyrs’ large place in modern Greek and Balkan piety. The second draws the parallel with the sibling collection, the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, and closes the collection with a sober assessment.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox
Overview
A collection about martyrs must end where the martyrs live on — in the Church’s worship and memory. Two files do this.
The first, The Feast and the Cult, treats the liturgical veneration: the collective Synaxis of the Holy New Martyrs kept on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, the common service St. Nikodemos composed for it, and the individual feast-days; and the material and popular cult — relics, icons, shrines, and the neomartyrs’ place in the piety of modern Greece and the Balkans, including the recent movements of their relics and the honors paid them in the national Churches.
The second, The Neomartyrs and the New Martyrs of Russia, sets this company beside the repository’s sibling group-collection, the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia — two “new martyr” categories, four centuries apart, under very different persecutions, joined by a single theology of martyrdom and a shared discipline of honest reckoning — and offers the collection’s closing assessment.
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-feast-and-the-cult.md | The Synaxis of the New Martyrs (Third Sunday after Pentecost); Nikodemos’s common service; the individual feasts; relics, icons, shrines, and modern Greek and Balkan piety |
| the-neomartyrs-and-the-new-martyrs-of-russia.md | The parallel with the New Martyrs of Russia; the shared theology and the differing persecutions; the collection’s closing assessment |
See Also
- Who the Neomartyrs Are — the category now seen in its veneration
- Historiography and Assessment — the memory held honestly, which the veneration must stand beside
- The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia — the sibling group-collection
References
- Nikodemos the Hagiorite, St. Common service for the New Martyrs, in the Neon Martyrologion. Venice, 1799.
- Vaporis, Nomikos Michael. Witnesses for Christ. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000.