Serapion of Vretou (II)

Serapion was a monk of the Monastery of Vretou on Chios, bearing the same name as another monk of it who was canonized with him. He was killed by the Ottomans on Chios in 1822, and the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece numbered him among the saints on 15 July 2021, on the proposal of Metropolitan Markos of Chios. His commemoration, together with that of the other martyrs of Chios, is kept on the Sunday of the Paralytic, at the metropolitan church of Chios.

Chios was laid waste in the spring of 1822, when the Ottomans moved against the island: thousands were slaughtered, others sold as slaves, and monasteries and churches were burned or plundered. Vretou, a monastery of the Life-⁠giving Spring near Armolia, raised in the eighteenth century, had been a centre of the Kollyvades movement. Our sources say no more about his earlier life or the circumstances of his death.