Romanus of Lacedaemon

Holy Venerable Martyr Romanus of Lacedaemon, a hieromonk, struggled in a monastery of Constantinople and was beheaded by the Turks in 1695, because he boldly rebuked the Muslim heresy and refused to renounce Christ.

The hagiographic sources keep no details of his life, so his place of origin remains an open question. According to K. Sathas, in the list of testimonies on martyrs from the fall of Constantinople until 1811, the martyrdom of the hieromonk Romanus of Lacedaemon at Constantinople falls on 6 January 1695. Some martyrologies say that he came from Dominitsa (Diminitsa), in Lacedaemon; Eugenios Voulgaris, in a letter to Pierre Leclerc, writes that he came from the region of Stemnitsa. These names are not known in Laconia at that time; Diminitsa is mentioned only outside the Peloponnese, in the Grevena area. Some scholars think his homeland could have been Stemnitsa in the diocese of Dimitsana in Arcadia, which was then under the jurisdiction of the metropolis of Lacedaemon.

He is commemorated on 19 January, in the new style, the date coming from Greek sources; his name has not been entered in the present calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church.