Christopher I

Holy Hierarch and Hieromartyr Christopher I was patriarch of Antioch in the tenth century and was killed by the Arabs in the year 967.

He was elected patriarch in the year 960, in the fourteenth year of the caliph Al-⁠Muti (946-974), as the Arab chronicler Yahya tells. In the night between Monday and Tuesday of 967 he was killed by the Arabs, accused of being in league with the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus Phocas, who had marched with his army against Antioch. His body was thrown into the river Orontes. It is said that the killing took place in the house of Ibn Manik, whom the patriarch had helped. After eight days the Christians found the body and buried it reverently on an islet of the river; later they moved it to the monastery of Saint Arsenius outside the city.

He is commemorated on 21 May, according to the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).