Melchizedek

Melchizedek Despotakis, Bishop of Kisamos and Selinos in western Crete, was hanged by the Turks at Chania in 1821. The Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered him among the saints in the year 2000 as a hieromartyr. The Church commemorates him on 23 June with the martyrs of Crete, and at Chania also on 19 May, the day of his hanging.

He was a native of Heraklion and was trained at Iasi, in Moldavia. He was ordained bishop in January 1818, succeeding Ioannikios, with his seat in the church of the Archangel Michael at Kisamos. He is said to have joined the Society of Friends, the Filiki Etaireia, and to have been one of those who prepared the uprising in Crete in 1821. The Christians of Chania asked for his arrest, and the Turkish governor imprisoned him in the fortress at Splantzia together with his deacon Kallinikos, on a charge of stirring up the Christian population.

After harsh torments he was hanged, and the deacon Kallinikos also received a martyr's death. His killers abused him in front of the crowd. The plane tree at Splantzia, beside the church of St Nicholas, on which he was hanged, is still shown today.