Blaise of Acarnania

Holy Hieromartyr Blaise of Acarnania was abbot, or a bishop living in stillness, of the Monastery of the Entrance of the Mother of God in the Sklavaina-⁠Zaverda area, now Palairos in Aetolia-⁠Acarnania. He received the crown of martyrdom at the hands of Agarene pirates, together with five monks of his community and a crowd of lay Christians, men, women and children, who were his flock.

They beheaded him after slowly driving five nails into his body, and then his executioners tried to burn the body, but it did not burn. The Christians who survived buried Blaise apart, and the five martyred monks together in a common grave; the other Christians were buried in a larger pit. The martyrdom took place on a Sunday, 19 December. A stone inscription found at his tomb bore the year 1006, which may be the year of his suffering.

For nearly nine hundred years the memory was lost. Oral tradition kept only the report of a massacre at some unknown time, which is said to explain the name of the place, Sklavaina, from slavery. From 1915 several local people began to see in dreams a venerable monk who told them to dig at a certain place and bring up his relics. They built a small shrine there to Saint Blaise of Sebaste, but did not dig.

On the night of 23 August 1923 a pious widow, Euphrosyne Katsara, was nursing her daughter, who was dying of typhoid fever, when a dazzling light filled the house and a priest in hierarchal vestments, holding a staff, told her he was Saint Blaise. He made the sign of the cross over the sick girl, led Euphrosyne to the site of his grave and traced a circle in the earth with his staff. The girl recovered. Euphrosyne began work the next day despite the others' disbelief, and on the third day the pick struck a stone slab; when it was lifted a heavenly fragrance spread. In the tomb, over the relics, lay a heavy iron pectoral cross and the five nails of his martyrdom. She gathered the holy relics and began to build a church and have his icon painted. The saint appeared again to Archimandrite Arsenios Tsatalios in 1978 and to the monk Paisios the Athonite on Athos in 1980.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered him among the saints in 2016, on 29 August. He is the patron of Acharnes in Attica. His feast is on 7 July, according to the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).