Zlata of Meglen

The Holy Great Martyr Zlata of Meglen (Chrysi) was a maiden of Macedonia, killed by the Turks in 1795 because she would not renounce Christ. She is a new martyr and is honoured especially in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia. Her feast is on 13 October (the miracle at Skopje) and on 18 October (the day of repose).

Life and martyrdom

Her life is known from her short Greek life, written in 1799 by Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite on the testimony of the protohegumen Timothy, her spiritual father, a witness of her martyrdom. She was born in the village of Slatina in the Meglen region (now Chrysi, in Greece), of poor Bulgarian Christian parents, and had three sisters. She was gentle, pious and beautiful. Once, while gathering wood at the edge of the village, she was seen by a Turk, who kidnapped her with the help of his friends. He tried to make her accept Islam and be his wife, promising her wealth. The saint answered: I believe in Christ and know him alone as my Bridegroom; I will never renounce him, though you put me to a thousand torments and cut me in pieces. Six months she endured the urging of the Turk and his wives, then they turned to threats against her parents and sisters, who, frightened, begged her in tears to renounce at least in name, to save her life, for Christ is merciful and will forgive a fault of necessity. Zlata answered them that, if they advised her to renounce the true God, they were no longer her parents: she had as father the Lord Jesus Christ, as mother the Mother of God, and as brothers and sisters the saints.

The tyrant shut her up three months in darkness and scourged her every day until the ground was wet with blood, cutting her skin and passing a red-⁠hot rod through her ears. She asked that her father's spiritual father, the protohegumen Timothy of Stavronikita, come to pray for her. In the end she was hung from a pear tree and cut to pieces with sabres, the Turks vying with one another. Her relics were gathered in secret by Christians, who buried her. She fell asleep in October 1795.

Veneration

In 1912, at Skopje, the uprising of the Serbs against the Turks broke out. According to tradition, on 13 October, a maiden appeared before the Serbian soldiers, strengthened their courage before the battle and helped them win; in her the Serbs recognised Zlata of Meglen, and in memory of the miracle they set a special celebration on 13 October. The Bulgarian Church celebrates her on 18 October. In 2009 a priest, Konstantinos Kodzaboyiukis, found her relics beside the ruins of the cathedral of the old metropolis of Meglen, at the Byzantine fortress, four or five hundred metres from the village of Chrysi; examined by the forensic service of Thessalonica and two laboratories in Germany, they were shown to belong to a woman of about seventeen, killed in 1795, with marks of torture on the skull and ribs. In 2009 too she was chosen heavenly protector of Bulgarian women abroad. In icons she is shown as a girl in Bulgarian or Macedonian folk costume. Churches bear her name in Bulgaria, North Macedonia (among them the one in Zagreb, consecrated in 2023), Australia and Greece.