By Archimandrite Athanasios Giannousas,
Protosyngellos of the Holy Metropolis of Kastoria
The New Martyrs, as Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite writes in the prologue of the New Martyrology, are the glory of the Church and the renewal of the entire Orthodox faith.
For, seeing the courageous confession of these people who lived in the years of slavery under the heavy foot of the conqueror, they learned what Saint Demetrios, Saint George, and the other ancient Martyrs had endured in earlier times was real, and they saw it with their own eyes in the persons of these New Martyrs.
It has also been written about the New Martyrs that they were the bulwarks during this difficult period, the resistors — if we wish to use an expression of our time — who by their martyrdom prevented the Islamization of many Christians of their era.
I used to hear about the New Martyrs from my childhood years on Saint Nicholas Street of Acharnon Street.
We celebrated them every year on the Third Sunday of Matthew, something which also takes place in Kastoria every year, and indeed the Service is chanted in all the churches and a related encyclical of our Bishop is read, who especially venerates the New Martyrs.
In honor of the New Martyrs, a splendid church is being built in the borderland and historic Oinoe of Kastoria, in which there will also be small portions of the Holy Relics of the Holy New Martyrs.
Kastoria, together with the Champion General, the Panagia, and the whole company of Saints who guard it protectively, has to boast not only of its Byzantine monuments, its tradition and its heritage, but also of the presence of New Martyrs.
On April 21 of the year 1696, Noultzos was martyred.
The testimony exists in the codex of the Sacred Metropolis and is written in the hand of the late Metropolitan of Kastoria Dionysios.
This departed Hierarch writes:
“In the year 1696, April 21, they hanged Noultzos together with his brother and his brother-in-law, and the next day there was great goodness among the Christians because they saw him on the rope and glorified God, how they were perfected in great glory, and thus may God grant to many such Christians like Noultzos to receive glory.”
In this testimony I make the following observations:
A) “There was great goodness among the Christians, when they saw him on the rope and glorified God.” — If we take into account what Photios Kontoglou mentions about the Holy New Martyr George of Chios, who was martyred in his homeland of Aivali, or what the sacred synaxarist mentions about Saint George who was martyred in Ioannina in 1838, the word “goodness” is interpreted as meaning that the persecution for Islamization stopped.
They stopped pressuring the Christians to abandon their ancestral piety and become Muslims. For this reason, when they were taking Saint George to be hanged in the marketplace of Ioannina, the Christian inhabitants of Ioannina were saying to him: “Be careful not to yield, because then we will all become Turks.”
B) “They glorified God.” As soon as the martyr completed his martyrdom, then from mouth to mouth it was immediately spread that he had indeed conquered and had gone crowned to heaven; therefore the Christians, comforted, made the sign of the cross saying, “Glory to You, O God.”
In other words, the force of the conquerors, their fury and their vengeance, fell upon these victims, as also upon the Holy Patriarch Gregory V, and in this way innocent souls were saved.
C) The text of the late Dionysios writes: “in great glory.” That is, God — if we take into account other martyrdoms of Holy New Martyrs — glorified this martyr with divine signs, with light that illumined his face, as with Saint George of Ioannina, with miracles and many other signs of the presence of God.
D) “...and thus may God grant to many such Christians like Noultzos to receive glory.” That is, that other Christians also may have this glory of the New Martyrs, this confirmation of the living faith, the witness of God for their persons and their sacrifice, and even more their intercession at the throne of God.
This forgotten New Martyr has been honored in recent years, with the contribution of our Bishop, together with the Holy New Martyr Mark from Kleisoura and George of Kastoria — the former Hasan according to Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite — in the city of Kastoria.
May the place of their martyrdom be found — the great poplar tree of Kastoria, as Pantelis Tzamis notes — and may God grant that we also find their grace-flowing relics, which the Kastorian land holds as precious, just as it does those of Pavlos Melas.
All these are our priceless treasures — our tradition and our heritage.
Thanks to these treasures, we have nothing to fear and nothing to envy…
Holy New Martyrs, intercede for us!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.