Euthymius of Zograf

Holy Venerable Martyr Euthymius of Zograf was a monk of the Zograf Monastery on Athos and one of its twenty-⁠six martyrs, burned in the monastery tower by Latin troops between 1274 and 1284.

When the Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos concluded union with Rome in 1274, most Athonite monasteries refused to betray Orthodoxy and rebuked the apostates. For this the Holy Mountain was struck by Latin troops and mercenaries, who tortured many monks. Zograf, a monastery of Bulgarians, was more exposed, because the emperor did not wish to vex the Greeks and discharged his anger on monasteries of another people.

Learning in a wondrous way that the soldiers were approaching, Abbot Thomas told the brotherhood that whoever wished to stay alive should leave, and whoever desired martyrdom should stay. Twenty-⁠six remained, among them Euthymius, the other monks and four lay workers with no known name. They shut themselves in the tower, and when the soldiers set it on fire, the martyrs sang psalms and the akathist to the Mother of God and gave their souls to God on 10 October.

He is commemorated in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Athos, which in the Russian calendar falls on 4 July, but is a movable day.