John of Monemvasia

Holy New Martyr John of Monemvasia was a young priest's son from the Peloponnese, killed by a Turkish master on 19 October 1773 (he died two days later) because he refused to renounce his faith. The Church commemorates him on 21 October.

The sources give either 1755 or 1758 as his birth year. He was born near Monemvasia, in the village of Gouves, where his father, a priest from Geraki, was serving; his mother came from the neighbouring village. From early on he tried to imitate his father and helped him in church, so the other children called him "the priest's son". In 1770, when the Albanians came into the Peloponnese, his father was killed, and John and his mother were taken into captivity at Larisa and sold several times.

After about two years they came to the same Turkish master, a childless man who, seeing John's good qualities, wished to adopt him after making him a Muslim. Every day he tried to persuade him, first with flattery and promises, then with torments, but the youth, barely fifteen, answered: "I am not a Turk, I am a Christian, and a Christian I wish to die." The master's wife also tried to ruin him with spells, but he remained pure.

When the days of the fast of the Dormition came, the master realized that John would not break the fast, and he shut him in a barn for fifteen days, hung him up, lit a straw fire beneath him and struck him with the flat of his sword to make him eat meat. John touched no food but prayed to the Mother of God. The master then left him hungry for two or three days at a time. His mother, seeing him weakened, begged him to yield, but he answered that as a priest's son he must keep the rules of the Church more than others. In a rage the Turk stabbed him in the heart on 19 October 1773, and two days later the saint died and received the crown of martyrdom.

The saint's skull and parts of his hands and feet are kept at Zerbitsa Monastery near Sparta; other parts lie in the church of the Forty Martyrs in Larisa and at Voulkano Monastery in Messenia.