Nicholas of Magnesia

Holy Martyr Nicholas of Magnesia was a young man of twenty-⁠two from Asia Minor, who died in prison after the beatings of the Turks, in the year 1796, because he would not renounce faith in Christ.

He was born in 1774 (by other reports, in 1754) in the village of Pingea (in Turkish Yayaköy), near Magnesia (today Manisa, in Turkey), in the family of Hadji-⁠Kanellas, steward of the lands and flocks of the Turkish agha Kara-⁠Osman-⁠oglu. He was betrothed to a pious girl of the village. At twenty-⁠two, while preparing for the wedding, fixed for Thomas Sunday, he went to the town to ask permission to marry. As the servant of a powerful master, he dared to wear Turkish shoes and a red fez, which the Turks forbade to Christians. As he passed through the gate of the town, the guards recognised him as a Christian, seized him and took him to the judge. The latter asked whether his clothes showed a wish to accept Islam. Nicholas answered boldly that he would never renounce his faith and that he wore Turkish clothes with the permission of the agha, whom his father served. The judge ordered him beaten with sticks, but the youth stayed firm. Again and again he tried in vain to turn him, with flattery, with promises and with new torments. At the second interrogation Nicholas said: "I have death before my eyes, and there is no way to make me renounce my faith." They flogged him again, once more across the belly, then, in helpless rage, threw him half-⁠dead into prison, where he died after three days, thanking the Lord that he had been found worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. Some sources give the year 1796, others 1769 or 1776.

His life entered the New Martyrologion of Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite, where the name was wrongly written George; the same error appears in the Orthodox Encyclopedia. In the Greek calendar the saint is named Nicholas.

His memory is kept on 7 May, according to the Greek calendar.