Jonah of Pergamos

Holy Hierarch Jonah of Pergamos was a great hermit, ascetic and wonderworker of Cyprus, commemorated on 11 October. From childhood he knew Christ and loved Him, storing in his pure heart the words of God heard in church, and from them grew in him the desire to live by the words of Christ. When he heard that the envoys of the Pope of Rome were travelling the countries of Europe calling the faithful to an expedition to free the Holy Places, he, with three hundred other Greek Orthodox who worked in Germany, was the first to enlist. This army, the Second Crusade (1147 to 1149), dissolved before reaching its goal, and the three hundred Greeks, known as the Alamanni, continued on their way to Jerusalem and venerated there.

After fulfilling their wish, they decided not to return to their work but to stay and live as monks in the Jordan wilderness. Being pursued by Saracens and Latins, they gathered one day and, with Auxentius (28 September), who later lived in Karpasia, as their leader, came to Cyprus around 1150 or a little later. Their ship was wrecked on the rocks of the harbour of Paphos. After many hardships they reached land and scattered over Cyprus to live as ascetics. Jonah, parting from his friend and fellow ascetic Kendeas (6 October), after passing through several places, settled in a cave in the Mandres area of Trachia, in the Famagusta district, "in a village called Pergamos".

There he struggled against the flesh with prayer, abstinence, fasting and careful study of the word of God. The devil tested him with water too: when his disciple brought him water, for several days the devil took the saint's shape, emptied the jar and drove the disciple away, until Jonah understood the trick. Then he prayed and, striking the rock with his staff like a second Moses, caused crystal-⁠clear water to spring up in an instant. The spring remained until 1912 under the name "the holy water of the venerable"; then the fanaticism of the Muslims of Pergamos brought down the cave with machines and ruined the spring and the church; the expelled Christians took the saint's icon to Xylotymbou, where it is kept. The venerable worked many miracles; once he raised the dead child of a father who begged him with tears.

In that cave he lived all the days of his life, leaving it only now and then to visit his friend Kendeas, who had settled near Avgorou. The faithful found him one day dead, his body giving off a fragrance, and buried him in tears where he had struggled. A small church of Venerable Jonah, built in 1983 west of Xylotymbou, preserves the memory of the church at Pergamos. He is commemorated on 11 October, in the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).