Eustathius

Saint Eustathius the Martyr was a young Christian of Crimea who received the crown of martyrdom at Theodosia, the old Kaffa, in 1759, when he was only fourteen years old. The Church of Greece commemorates him on 10 May.

He was born in 1745, at a time when Crimea was under the rule of the Tatars and the Ottoman Empire. The Orthodox Christians of the peninsula, most of them Greeks, were then shepherded by the Metropolitan of Gothia and Kaffa, who lived near the Monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos close to Bakhchisaray.

Brought before a Turkish court, the young Eustathius boldly confessed his faith in Christ. He was beaten and cast into prison, where he was pressed to renounce the faith of his fathers. Because he stood firm, he was condemned to death and beheaded at Theodosia in 1759.

His body was buried, it seems, in the great church of the Dormition in the monastery near Bakhchisaray, near which Metropolitan Gideon of Kaffa was then living. No further details of his life have been preserved.

Saint Eustathius is honoured among the new martyrs of the time of Ottoman rule, and the Great Synaxaristes of the Greek Church commemorates him on 10 May as the Holy Martyr Eustathius of Crimea.