The Sixteen Venerable Martyrs of the Great Lavra

The Sixteen Venerable Martyrs of the Great Lavra were fathers of the Great Lavra on the Holy Mountain, put to death at Thessaloniki after the outbreak of the uprising of 1821. They are venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

The Greek uprising of 1821 brought a heavy Turkish occupation on Athos: the pasha of Thessaloniki entered the Holy Mountain with an army, imposed great levies on the monasteries and took the abbots as hostages. The Great Lavra suffered deeply from these events. The Russian Orthodox Encyclopedia lists among the saints who came from the Lavra the hieromartyr Constantius, prohegumen of the Lavra, together with sixteen Lavra fathers, venerable martyrs, who suffered at Thessaloniki. A Greek collection of synaxaria of the new martyrs preserves a synaxarion of the sixteen martyrs of the Great Lavra, and the account of Dositheos of Konstamonitou recalls their suffering. Accounts of the Athonite martyrs of Thessaloniki preserve the names of thirty-⁠three martyrs of the Great Lavra, but the list of these sixteen, and the days of their suffering, do not appear in the sources we had to hand.