The 179 Venerable Martyrs of Ntaou Penteli

The 179 Venerable Martyrs of Ntaou Penteli are the monks killed on Pascha of the year 1680 in the Pantokrator Monastery at Ntaou Penteli in Attica by pirates who came from the sea. Their names have been lost. Their bodies were found in 1963, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered them among the saints in 1992, appointing their commemoration on Bright Tuesday.

The monastery

The Pantokrator Monastery of Ntaou Penteli, on the eastern slope of Mount Penteli, was built before the tenth century over the ruins of older churches. Its name comes from the ancient inscription "Tao" found there. Before the Ottoman period it may have had over six hundred monks. Its main church has eight altars, a sign, it is said, that it was an "unsleeping" monastery in which the services never ceased by day or night. In the 1680s it was a dependency of Penteli Monastery, higher up the mountain.

The martyrdom

The account of the event was written soon afterwards by Cyril Degleri, abbot of Penteli Monastery. In Holy Week of 1680 pirates from Algiers, according to some sources Turkish or Albanian-⁠Turkish, landed at Rafina. They tried to plunder the fortified monastery and failed. A servant of the monastery, under circumstances that remain unclear, betrayed the fathers and showed the pirates an entrance unknown to outsiders.

On the night of the Resurrection, when the Liturgy had ended and the fathers had sung "Christ is risen" for the last time, the pirates burst into the church and began the slaughter. One hundred and seventy-⁠nine monks and hieromonks, among them the abbot, were killed. The pirates took the treasure and fled to Rafina, after setting the monastery on fire.

Two escaped death, a hieromonk and a novice, because they were at Nea Makri, at a farm belonging to the monastery, where they had served the Paschal Liturgy. On Sunday evening they returned and found two murdered monks at the gate and the monastery burned, except for the church. Inside, dozens of fathers lay in their blood, some beaten cruelly, others cut in pieces. On Bright Monday they went to the fathers of Penteli Monastery, who came, held a funeral service in Bright Week and buried the dead.

The finding of the relics

From 1680 until 1963 the monastery stood deserted, with one monk to look after it. In 1963, with the blessing of Archbishop Chrysostomos of Athens, eleven nuns from the Monastery of St Patapios at Loutraki came to revive it. Where the martyrs had been buried was unknown: all the records said the fathers of Penteli had buried them, but not where. The sisters searched outside the monastery and found nothing.

Work began in September 1963. The sisters prayed for forty days that the relics might be discovered. On the afternoon of the fortieth day, workmen replacing the floor tiles in the church noticed a fragrance filling the church and the whole monastery. The abbess, Styliani, asked that the dig begin in front of the Royal Doors. There they found a whole body, incorrupt, taken to be the abbot at the time of the slaughter. Then they uncovered 64 other bodies, 65 in all. Archbishop Chrysostomos came and confirmed the finding.

One hundred and fourteen were still missing. Some pilgrims, among them Elder Iakovos Tsalikes and Metropolitan Antonios of Sisanion, saw lights like oil lamps above the graves. Elder Porphyrios told the later abbess, also named Styliani, that the nuns "walk over the graves of other saints". After these words a dig was made in 1990 around the church, and many more relics were found, placed in a reliquary in the church and in a chapel beside it. The relics flow with myrrh and give off a sweet fragrance.

Canonization and veneration

The martyrs were not declared saints at once. But because of the many miracles worked through their relics, Archbishop Seraphim of Athens asked the Ecumenical Patriarchate for their canonization. The Patriarchate accepted it in 1992 and appointed their commemoration on Bright Tuesday, the day the fathers of Penteli buried them. The names of the 179 are unknown, because the pirates burned the monastery and its old records. A few names have been learned by the faithful in dreams linked with healings, for example that of Father Mark.

Today the monastery is a community of more than thirty nuns, who live from church embroidery, liturgical tailoring and iconography, keep a school of church music and receive visitors with hospitality. A new church dedicated only to the 179 martyrs was built over six years.