Emmanuel, Anezina, George and Maria

Emmanuel, Anezina and their children George and Maria were a family of farmers of Melissourgio in Kissamos, Crete, who lived secretly as Christians under Muslim names and were beheaded at Chania for their faith in 1681. They are honoured as new martyrs, locally, and are commemorated on 14 July. They have no known canonization.

Under the Turkish names Ibrahim, Fatme, Mustafa and Hatice they were forty, thirty-⁠eight, eighteen and sixteen years old. Eight years earlier the parents had appeared before the judge of Kissamos and declared that they wished to become Muslims, they and their children. They had been entered as Muslims and all four lived so in the eyes of the world. They worked quietly in their fields. But in secret they had remained Christians.

One day a neighbour, Moura Aga, saw them make the sign of the Cross before eating, in the village of Plakalona in Kissamos. With three other witnesses he watched them and saw them make the sign of the Cross again when they were preparing to sleep on the threshing floor. They were denounced to the judge of Chania, Ismail Haki Hafiz Ali Oglou. They were brought in heavy chains and questioned. They answered: "We were born Christians and we will die Christians." They said that they had become Turks only in body and not in soul, and did not mean to deny Christ.

The judge sentenced them to death by beheading, on the eastern side of the fortress of Chania. After the judgment was pronounced they were brought again to be offered life if they returned to Islam. They refused again. Their bodies were thrown outside the fortress and eaten by dogs and crows. The only trace of them that survives is the court's decision, written on the 27th of the month of Jumada al-⁠Akhir in the year 1092 of the Hegira, that is in 1681, not in 1861 as is sometimes given in translations.