Theonas of Thessaloniki

Saint Theonas was metropolitan of Thessaloniki in the sixteenth century, venerated as a saint in connection with the town of Galatista in Chalkidiki. The sources give neither the act nor the date of canonization: they say only that, according to the New Martyrologion, he was numbered after death among the saints. The birth year 1600 on the record does not fit the time in which he lived, and the feast day on the record, 4 April, is not supported by the sources.

According to the Greek source, he was born at Kournela, near Plomari, on Lesbos. He was a disciple of the Holy Venerable Martyr James, at whose urging he was appointed in 1520 abbot of a monastery in Aetolia-⁠Acarnania, at Trekevisti. After the end of James's martyrdom, Theonas and the other disciples left Trekevisti and came to the Holy Mountain, where they settled near a dependency of Simonopetra monastery. From there he went to Galatista in Chalkidiki, where he found a small old monastery, Saint Anastasia Pharmakolytria (Deliverer from Poisons), which he renewed and where he lived with his fellow students. In a short time about a hundred monks gathered there, and they elected him abbot.

Later Theonas became a disciple of Theophanes Eleavoulkos and was ordained archbishop of Paronaxia. In 1560 he was named patriarchal exarch. Then he became metropolitan of Thessaloniki and in that capacity signed in 1565 the deposition of Patriarch Joasaph. Dorotheus of Monemvasia, in the Chronographer, counts him among the wonderful disciples of Theophanes, and Demetrius of Thessaloniki, writing in 1560 to the Patriarch of Constantinople, calls him a wise man, able to judge the truth.

The Serbian and Bulgarian sources say otherwise: that he was born on Lesbos, was tonsured at Pantokrator monastery on Athos, then went to the monastery of Saint John the Baptist at Nafpaktos, where he became abbot, and that in 1539 he was metropolitan of Thessaloniki, a date which does not agree with the Greek source, which places him in the 1560s. The same sources say that he built the monastery of Saint Anastasia the Confessor in Chalkidiki, that he was distinguished by holiness of life and worked many miracles in life and after death. His signature was affixed in 1561 by Patriarch Joasaph II to the charter conferring the title of tsar on the grand prince of Moscow, Ivan IV. He took part in the council of Constantinople, presided over by Archbishop Paisius of Ohrid, which deposed Patriarch Joasaph II in 1565, and signed the act of the council of January 1565 as the humble metropolitan of Thessaloniki.

Among his writings are a letter published by Crusius in Turcograecia and a preface to a volume of homilies printed in Venice in 1560.