Gerasimos

Gerasimos, Bishop of Rethymno in Crete, was hanged by the Turks in 1822 after a harsh imprisonment and torments. The Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered him among the saints in the year 2000 as a hieromartyr, and the Church commemorates him on 23 June, in the synaxis of the martyrs of Crete of 1821 and 1822. His surname is given either as Perdikaris or as Kontogiannakis.

He was shepherd of the diocese of Rethymno from 1796 until April 1822, nearly a quarter of a century, and is counted among the bishops who stayed with their flocks in the years of the Revolution. When the Turks began the persecution in Crete they seized him and shut him in a neglected, disused house with a heavy stench. After many torments he was hanged at Rethymno. Few details of his early life are preserved.

The Church of Crete counted him from the first among the martyrs who suffered in 1821, although his death came later, in the spring of 1822, and a troparion of his own praises him because he endured prison and the gallows as a shepherd defending his people. The Metropolis of Rethymno remembers him as a new hieromartyr.