Eleni of Lesbos

Saint Eleni of Lesbos, also called Susanna, is one of the New Martyrs of Lesbos commemorated on Bright Tuesday. She was the older cousin of Saint Irene and suffered with Saints Raphael, Nicholas and Irene on 9 April 1463, which was Bright Tuesday.

On 12 November 1961 Mrs. Basilike Rallis dreamed that she was by the church at Karyes near the town of Thermi on Lesbos and saw inside a girl of fourteen or fifteen, dark-⁠haired and dark-⁠complexioned, who was praying. The girl said to her: "Do you know who I am? I am a martyr. Not like Renoula, of course, but if you only knew what I endured. I lived with the mayor's family, and I was with them when the Turks tortured them here. They gave me such a horrible beating that I died from the pains. My name is Eleni." The saint also revealed the place where an icon of the Mother of God that the woman had been seeking would be found. The next night the woman dreamed again of the church and saw the clerics Raphael and Nicholas and Irene with her family. An unknown saint told her that Eleni had not been the mayor's servant but his orphaned niece who lived with them, whose proper name, which she signed on papers, was Eleni, though she was also called Susanna, and that she wished to be remembered.

The newly appeared martyrs of Lesbos are also commemorated on 9 April. Detailed accounts may be found in A Great Sign (in Greek) by Photios Kontoglou (Astir, 1964). Eleni is commemorated on 9 April (new style; 22 April on the old calendar).