Aquilina of Zagliveri

Saint Aquilina the New Martyr was born in 1745 at Zagliveri, a village near Thessaloniki, when Greece was under Turkish rule, and received the crown of martyrdom on 27 September 1764. She is commemorated on 27 September. Our source calls her a holy new martyr, but does not say by what act she was numbered among the saints.

When she was young, her father killed a Muslim neighbour and, afraid for his life, turned to Islam. Her mother, however, was an Orthodox Christian and raised her daughter in the Orthodox faith.

When Aquilina reached the age of eighteen, the Turks pressed her father to persuade her to accept Islam. She refused and was arrested. She was tortured for many long hours. She was hung by her hands and beaten with thorny rods and sticks taken from a jar filled with a red liquid, a poison. She was bound to an iron instrument of torture, with her hands and feet tightly bound over sharp pulleys and her ribs resting on sharp nails. Her clothes and her flesh were torn, and her limbs came to hang only by the rest of her body. The poison poured on her burned her flesh, and the pain was unbearable. For endless hours she was hung, beaten and tormented. The ground around her was stained red by her blood, and nothing could be distinguished on her body.

With her eyes toward heaven she tried to repeat, "I am a Christian and I will die a Christian." In the afternoon of the last day, in pain and wounds, she was brought to her home. Her mother clasped her in her arms as soon as she saw her and asked, "My child, did you perhaps falter and deny Christ?" Aquilina answered with difficulty, "Mother, I did as you told me. The diamond you entrusted to me I kept clean and unstained, and now I go to Christ, my Lord and my God."

It was 27 September 1764 when she gave her holy soul into the hands of the Lord. Pious Christians hid her holy body to save it from desecration. After a revelation, her relics were found in 2012 in the nearby town of Ossa, near Thessaloniki.