Martyrs of the Lavra of Saint Sabbas

The Venerable Martyrs of the Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified were monks of the lavra of Saint Sabbas, killed by the Persians in the year 614, in the conquest of the Holy Land. The Russian Church commemorates them under the name Venerable Fathers Slain in the Lavra of Saint Sabbas (614) on 16 May by the old calendar (29 May by the new); it is one of the synaxis feasts. The Russian Mission in Jerusalem includes them in the Synaxis of the Saints of Palestine, commemorated in the Holy Land on the second Sunday after Pentecost.

In the time of the shahanshah Khosrow II Parviz (591 to 628), taking advantage of the temporary weakness of the Byzantine Empire and of its newly installed Orthodox emperor, Heraclius I (610 to 641), the Persian conquerors, who seized Palestine in a plundering raid in 614, came to the monastery to plunder it, thinking that the monks kept many treasures. But it turned out that the monks had nothing except spiritual riches and virtues. Then the Persians decided to force the venerable fathers to renounce Christ. The brotherhood of the monastery rejected the demand of those who had come from the east. In reply, the angry Persian soldiers put to death all the monks of the ancient Christian monastery.

The killing was done in a barbarous way: some were beheaded, others cut in two, others hacked to pieces or tormented with nails. Tradition says that forty-⁠four monks perished in torments. Their cells were plundered and ruined, and the names of the venerable martyrs remained unknown to history.

The tragic event has remained in the memory of the Orthodox Church. In 2014, in the Russian Church, the Church of Greece, the Church of Jerusalem and in the lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, as it now stands, jubilee services were held, dedicated to the spiritual labour of the venerable martyrs, on the fourteen hundredth anniversary of the tragic event. Parts of the relics and the skulls of the tormented monks are kept in a special crypt of the lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified. In Russia, in the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Mansurovo, Istra district, Moscow region, particles of the relics of the venerable fathers slain in the lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified are also kept.