Angelina of Zagliveri

Saint Angelina of Zagliveri is commemorated in the calendar of the Orthodox Church of North Macedonia on 27 September. Greek sources know her as the Holy New Martyr Akylina of Zagliveri, and the name Angelina is held, according to one view, to be the original form of her name.

She was born around the middle of the eighteenth century at Zagliveri near Thessaloniki, in the Lagadas district, of Christian parents. Her mother spoke to her from childhood of Christ and the saints, and the example of Saint Kyranna of Ossa, who suffered when Akylina was six years old, stayed with her. Her father, Giorgis, had stabbed a Turkish neighbour to death and, to escape punishment, had denied the faith. When the pasha of Thessaloniki asked for her as a wife for his son, Akylina refused and rebuked her father for his apostasy. He dragged her by the hair to the Ottoman authorities.

The judge tempted her with a life of ease, but she answered that she wanted only the true Life, in Christ. Put to torture, she was beaten with willow rods, then with wire ropes, and her hair was combed with a metal-⁠toothed comb dipped in acid. Left to die, she assured her mother that she had remained faithful. Her father buried her body in the Muslim cemetery, but three young men of the village dug it up at night by the light of the full moon and moved it to a place kept hidden for centuries.

In 2011, in the time of Metropolitan John of Lagadas, the search began for her relics and those of Saint Kyranna. Saint Akylina's relics were found beside the sanctuary of the church of the Taxiarchs at Ossa, seven metres from those of Kyranna, and after nearly two hundred and fifty years they were brought on horseback to her village of Zagliveri, where they are kept in the church dedicated to her. The marks of her torments can still be seen on the skull. Her memory is kept on 27 September.