Menas

Venerable Martyr Mina was a monk of the Zograf Monastery on Mount Athos and one of the 26 venerable martyrs of Zograf, killed by fire by the Latins because they would not accept the union of Lyons. He died between 1274 and 1284 (by Bulgarian tradition in 1276, by others in 1284). He is venerated by the faithful, in the Synaxis of the Bulgarian saints and of the Athonite saints, and is commemorated on 10 October together with the other martyrs.

Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos entered into union with Rome in 1274, and most Athonite monasteries refused to betray Orthodoxy and rebuked those who abandoned it. For this the Holy Mountain suffered invasions by Latin troops and mercenaries, who tortured many monks. The Zograf monastery, inhabited by Bulgarians, was especially exposed. Learning in a miraculous way of the soldiers' approach, Abbot Thomas told the brothers that whoever wished to survive should flee, and whoever desired martyrdom should stay. Twenty-⁠six remained: Abbot Thomas, the monks Barsanuphius, Cyril, Michael, Simon, Hilarion, Jacob, another Jacob, Job, Cyprian, Sabbas, Martinian, Cosmas, Sergius, Mina, Joasaph, Joannicius, Paul, Anthony, Euthymius, Dometian, Parthenius and four lay workers whose names are not known. They shut themselves in the monastery tower; when the Latins arrived, they set fire to the tower. While it burned the martyrs sang psalms and the akathist to the Mother of God and so gave their souls to God on 10 October. Their story is preserved in the "Tale of the Martyrs of Zograf," in a seventeenth-⁠century manuscript found by the Russian scholar Victor Grigorovich at Shipka; some scholars question its historical accuracy. In 1873 a monument was raised on the site of the burned tower.