Ignatius the New

Holy Venerable Martyr Ignatius the New of Athos, who confessed at Constantinople, is numbered among the venerable martyrs Acacius, Euthymius and Ignatius of Athos, who suffered in the Turkish persecution. Ignatius (in the world Ioann) was a monk and died a martyr on 8 October 1814 at Constantinople.

He was born at Stara Zagora and was probably a Bulgarian by birth. At the end of the eighteenth century his parents, George and Maria, moved to Plovdiv (Philippopolis). From childhood he was distinguished by piety and spent six years at the Rila monastery, in obedience to a stern elder. According to the Bulgarian version of the Life, in the monastery he lived with his uncle, the hieromonk Ignatius (Kalpakchiev), a former brigand who repented and became a monk. Ioann returned to Plovdiv when the Turks were recruiting men into the army to suppress the revolt in Serbia. His father refused to fight against fellow believers and was cruelly killed, while his mother and two sisters were forced to convert to Islam. Learning of it, Ioann hid with a pious old woman. His sisters betrayed him to the Turks, but Ioann managed to escape. For a time he stayed in Bucharest, then set out for the Holy Mountain, and at Shumen met an acquaintance from Bucharest, Eleutherius, who had turned to Islam. His friend's renunciation distressed him. On the road he was seized by the Turks and, from fear, promised also to turn to Islam. On Athos he visited various monasteries, stayed a time in the skete of Saint Anne, then moved to the skete of the Forerunner belonging to the Iviron monastery, where his guides were the confessor Nikephoros and the elder Acacius. Learning of the martyr's end of Venerable Martyr David at Thessalonica († 1813) and of his friend Eleutherius, who had received monasticism with the name Euthymius (see Euthymius the New of Dimitsana; † 22 March 1814), Ioann resolved to suffer for Christ and so to atone for the sin of weakness. The elder Acacius tonsured him a monk with the name Ignatius and blessed him for martyrdom.

On 29 September 1814 Ignatius came to Constantinople together with the monk Gregory, who had earlier accompanied Euthymius. A few days later, on a Tuesday, after receiving the Holy Mysteries, he put on Turkish dress and went to the session of the court. There he tore the turban from his head, threw it to the ground and said that in his youth he had lied, under compulsion, promising to renounce the faith, and that now he wished to take his words back and to confess Christ, the true God. The judge urged him to change his decision, but Ignatius boldly condemned the religion of the Muslims. He was shut in prison, where for two days they tried by persuasion and torture to force him to renounce Christ, but the martyr remained unshaken. Then he was condemned and hanged. After three days the monk Gregory ransomed his relics and on 20 October brought them to Athos, where he laid them, together with the relics of Venerable Martyr Euthymius, in the new church in the skete of Saint John the Baptist. Ignatius's venerable head is in the Russian monastery of the Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon on Athos, and particles of his relics are kept in the skete of the Forerunner and in the Iviron monastery.

Veneration of him is widespread among the Athonite monks. His commemoration is kept three times: on the day of the martyrdom (8 October), on 1 May together with Venerable Martyrs Euthymius the New and Acacius the New († 1 May 1816) and in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Athos. In the Athonite Paterikon the commemoration is given on 20 October, probably in honour of the day of arrival of the relics on Athos. The Life of Ignatius and his service were written by the monk Onuphrius of Iviron and first printed in Athens in 1862 by Acacius, a monk of the skete of Saint John the Baptist on Athos. In honour of Ignatius and of the martyrs Euthymius the New and Acacius the New a common service and a eulogy were written. The Athonite monk Gerasimus Mikragiannanites († 1991) composed, in honour of these three saints and of Venerable Martyr Onuphrius of Gabrovo († 4 January 1818), a common prayer canon and an akathist. Ignatius is depicted as a young beardless monk in a dark cassock, with a book in his right hand and a cross in his left, on the life icon The Holy Acacius, Ignatius and Euthymius (1818, the master Dositheus of the Patriarchate of Pec), kept in the skete of Saint John the Baptist.

The calendar we rely on commemorates him on 14 May and on 4 July (new style, the second being a movable day).