Demetrius of Samarina

Saint Demetrius of Samarina was a monk and new martyr, born at the end of the eighteenth century in the Vlach village of Samarina in the Pindus. He died under torture at Ioannina on 17 August 1808. He was canonized by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece. He is commemorated on 17 August, and by the metropolis of Grevena on 18 August.

His life was told by the French consul and traveler François Pouqueville (1770 to 1838), who was a witness of his martyr's death, in his book History of the Regeneration of Greece (1824). Demetrius was born at the end of the eighteenth century in the Vlach village of Samarina in the Pindus, then in the Ottoman Empire, today in Greece. As a young man he became a monk at the monastery of Saint Paraskevi. After Ali Pasha of Ioannina crushed in 1808 the uprising in the Pindus of Father Efthymios Vlachavas, Demetrius went about the villages of the Pindus to calm the population. Suspected of preaching revolt, he was arrested and brought before Ali Pasha at Ioannina.

Demetrius rejected the mockery of the Muslim ruler toward the icon of the Mother of God that he wore on his breast, and Ali Pasha ordered him tortured, to see whether the icon would protect him. After ten days of various torments, Demetrius died on 17 August 1808. Pouqueville relates that his martyrdom moved a Muslim to accept Christianity under the name George, and after torments he was killed at Agrinio.