Holy Venerable Martyrs Slain by the Latins in the Iviron Monastery on Athos (XIII)

The keeping of the memory of the holy fathers slain by the Latins on Athos began on the Holy Mountain of Athos and afterwards gradually took root in various local Churches.

As is known, Georgian monks began to settle on the mountain of Athos from the 950s, and very soon one of the greatest monasteries, called Iviron, took shape there.

The holy mountain of Athos was often attacked and plundered by foreign enemies, and in the thirteenth century it became a field for the raids of the crusaders. Papist knights laid the place waste several times between 1259 and 1306. For their loyalty to the Orthodox creed they savagely slaughtered the monks of Zographou, Vatopedi, the Protaton and other houses… The monastery of the Iberians did not escape their wrath either.

At that time Georgian and Greek fathers laboured together in the Iviron monastery on Athos, and a new generation of Georgian monks was going in great numbers from Georgia to Iviron.

The knights demanded that the monks of Iviron accept the Catholic faith and acknowledge the supremacy of the pope. The fathers bravely exposed their error and anathematised the invaders for preaching heresy.

As the Athonite Paterikon tells us, the papists drove the fathers of Iviron out of their house by force; the eldest of them — some two hundred monks — they put on the monastery’s ship and sank in the sea, while the younger monks, full of strength, most of whom were Georgians, they sent to Italy together with the monastery’s property and sold to the Jews as slaves.

According to one account, this took place in the lavra of the Iberians in 1259; according to other sources, probably in 1276–1280.