Synesios the New

Holy Venerable Martyr Synesios the New was a monk of the Konstamonitou Monastery on the Holy Mountain and received the crown of martyrdom at Thessalonica, between 1821 and 1824, at the beginning of the Greek Revolution. He is counted together with the monks Benedict, Timothy and Paul.

Synesios came from the East, from the village of Triglia in the province of Prusa (Asia Minor). When he reached marriageable age, he left his relatives and, full of zeal for monastic life, went to Mount Athos. He first went to the Iviron Monastery, where his brother Theophilos and his uncle Gerasimos were struggling; on their recommendation he came to Konstamonitou. There he met a monk, Nathanael, son of the steward priest Demetrios from his village, who urged him to stay as a novice; then he was tonsured a monk.

After the Revolution of 1821 and the Turkish raids on the Athonite monasteries, the monks, among them Synesios, led by the epitropos of the Holy Mountain, Spandonis, were taken for the second time to Thessalonica, imprisoned and cruelly tortured by order of Rubut Pasha, on the charge of not having revealed the hidden treasures of the monasteries. For two and a half years the monks, and Synesios with them, endured these tortures in prison and finally confessed the faith with their lives in 1824. Extensive information about his life and martyrdom is preserved by the monk Dositheos of Konstamonitou in his "New Commentary of the Newly Revealed Hieromartyrs and Venerable Martyrs", written probably between 1830 and 1844.

He is commemorated on 12 June, according to the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).