Venerable Martyrs of Iviron

The Venerable Martyrs of Iviron were monks of the Iviron Monastery on the Holy Mountain of Athos, killed by the Latins in the thirteenth century, around 1276, for their steadfastness in Orthodoxy. They are commemorated on 13 May, old style (26 May, new style).

Georgian monks began to settle on Athos from about the middle of the tenth century, and soon the Iviron Monastery arose. In the time of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos the union of the Orthodox with the Latins was made at the Second Council of Lyons, in 1274, and Patriarch John Bekkos was put on the throne to support it. Many Athonite monks refused the union, so crusader soldiers were sent to Athos to force them. Among the well-⁠known martyrs of that time are the 26 of Zographou, Saint Kosmas the Protos and monks of Vatopaidi. The crusaders demanded that the monks of Iviron accept the union and acknowledge the primacy of the pope, but they condemned their errors and anathematized the Catholic teaching. According to the Athonite Paterikon, the monks were forcibly expelled from the monastery; nearly two hundred elderly men were driven like cattle onto a ship, which was then sunk in the depths of the sea, while the younger and healthier monks, many of them Georgians, were taken to Italy and sold as slaves to the Jews. Some sources speak of four years of persecution, from 1276 to 1280; by others the event took place in 1259.