Anthony of Athens

Holy New Martyr Anthony of Athens was born in Athens, of poor parents, Mitros and Kalomoira, and was beheaded at Constantinople in 1774. He is commemorated on 5 February.

From the age of twelve he began working for Turks who had come from Albania, to help his family. At sixteen he was sold by his masters to Muslims in the Peloponnese, who bought him intending to torment him so as to make him renounce his faith. Unable to make him change his religion, they sold him to harsher Turks. Resold five times, to ever harsher masters, in different places, he remained always faithful, with spiritual courage, to the faith of his fathers. At last he was bought for four hundred grosia by an Orthodox Christian and settled in Constantinople.

In the workshop where he worked he was recognized by a Turk who had once bought him as a slave; he accused him of having accepted Islam and now denying it. They arrested him and brought him before the judge Murat Mulan, who tried by flattery and threats to make him change his faith. Anthony answered him not to think he could turn him from faith in Christ with his threats, and told him to torment him, scourge him, cut him to pieces, and devise an even more terrible death, for it was more likely that he would become a Christian than that Anthony would deny Christ. The judge, moved by his boldness, tried to acquit him but, fearing false witnesses, sent him to the vizier Mehmet Pasha, informing him of the saint's innocence. The vizier, convinced of his innocence, put him in prison to avoid the anger of the crowd. The enraged crowd accused the vizier of bribery before Sultan Hamid I (1774-1789), who ordered the saint beheaded. Confessing Christ once more, the martyr received the crown of glory, beheaded in 1774, on a Wednesday, in the Ak-⁠Serai district of Constantinople.