Eugenios Karavias

Saint Eugenios Karavias (born Efstathios), Metropolitan of Anchialos, hieromartyr, was born on the island of Ithaca in 1752 and was hanged by the Ottomans in Constantinople on Pascha, 10 April 1821, because he refused to condemn the Greek Revolution. The Church of Greece numbered him among the saints in 2021.

Life and ministry

He was born on 27 January 1752 on Ithaca, then under Venetian rule. As a young man he showed a love of learning and attended the schools of Cephalonia and Ithaca. He then went to Smyrna, to the Evangelical School, where he was ordained priest. He moved to Constantinople, where he was tutor of the children of the Phanariot princes of the Danubian Principalities, John Caradja and Alexander Callimachi. In March 1808, during the second patriarchate of Gregory V, he was elected Metropolitan of Philippopolis (Plovdiv), but stayed there only briefly, being driven out by the Turks. In 1813 he was moved to the see of Anchialos, on the Black Sea coast, where a large Greek population lived.

In 1816-1818 he was a member of the Synod in Constantinople. There he was initiated into the Filiki Eteria, the secret revolutionary society, by a relative of his, Vasileios Karavias.

Martyrdom

The outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821 found him at Anchialos. The Ecumenical Patriarchate then issued an anathema against the revolution and against Alexander Ypsilantis, and very few metropolitans refused to sign it. Metropolitan Eugenios was among them. He also refused to read it publicly when the Turks demanded it. He was arrested and imprisoned in Constantinople, in the prison of the Bostanci, together with other arrested hierarchs: Joseph of Thessalonica, Dorotheos of Adrianople, Gregory of Derkoi, Dionysios of Ephesus, Athanasios of Nicomedia and Joanikios of Tarnovo. When the Turks questioned him, according to tradition, he answered that he would not reply to a barbarian to save his life, and that the man should leave him in peace.

On Pascha, 10 April 1821, after the hanging of Patriarch Gregory V at the main gate of the Patriarchate, the Turks took Eugenios, together with Metropolitans Dionysios of Ephesus and Athanasios of Nicomedia, to different places in the city and hanged them. Eugenios was hanged at the Galata Gate, beside the bridge of the same name. On the chests of the three metropolitans they placed an insulting inscription calling them traitors and apostates. The bodies hung for three days, were then dragged through the streets by the mob and thrown into the sea. After a few days some devout Christians recovered them and buried them, some at the Heptapyrgion and others on a nearby island, in an unknown place. The other imprisoned metropolitans were hanged on 3 June 1821 in different parts of the city.

Glorification

By decision of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece on 15 July 2021, on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of the start of the Revolution, the hieromartyrs Eugenios of Anchialos, Joseph of Thessalonica, Gregory of Derkoi, Dionysios of Ephesus, Dorotheos of Adrianople, Athanasios of Nicomedia and Joanikios of Tarnovo were inscribed in the calendar of saints.