Holy Great Martyr John the New of Suceava (+c. 1330–1340)
The holy Great Martyr John the New of Suceava lived in Trebizond in the fourteenth century. He was a rich merchant, distinguished by piety, faithfulness to Orthodoxy, compassion and love for the poor.
Once the future saint had to travel by ship on business. The ship’s captain was not Orthodox. He started a dispute with John on questions of faith, was defeated, and harboured a grudge in his heart. When the ship stopped at Belgrade on the Bosporus, the captain went to the fire-worshipping ruler of the city and told him: “There is a learned man on my ship who wishes to accept your religion.”
The head of the city received John with honour, to join him to the fire-worshippers. The astonished John preached the true God to the fire-worshippers and convincingly proved to them the emptiness of their false religion.
For his courageous confession of Orthodoxy the saint was cruelly tortured: his body was lacerated and his flesh was torn off in pieces. But John gave thanks to the Lord, who had made him worthy to endure torments and shed his blood. At last he was thrown back into prison. In the morning the head of the city ordered the martyr to be brought before him again. He came before him with a bright and joyful face, confessed Christ with his old firmness, and called the ruler an instrument of Satan. The saint was given over to new torment: from the beating his entrails were laid bare and spilled out. The people could not bear this ghastly sight and with indignant cries denounced the head of the city, who treated an innocent man so inhumanly. Then the ruler, as if stopping the torture, ordered the great martyr to be tied to an unbroken horse and dragged through the streets of the city. The inhabitants of the Jewish quarter mocked and scorned the saint, and at last one of them struck off with a sword the head of the martyr, exhausted by his sufferings.
Saint John’s body and severed head lay in the street until evening. At night a pillar of light and a multitude of shining lamps appeared over the holy body. Three young men clothed in light chanted psalms and censed the martyr. A Jew thought that Christians had come to carry off the saint’s relics and seized his bow, but, bound by the invisible power of God, he suddenly froze. In the morning the vision vanished, but the archer still stood motionless. He was freed from his invisible bonds only when he told the townspeople who had gathered of the wonderful vision and the punishment that had befallen him. When the head of the city learned of what had happened, he gave the Christians permission to bury the great martyr. The holy body was buried in the city church. This happened between 1330 and 1340.
The captain who had handed John over to the lawless for torture repented and decided to carry his body to his homeland, but the saint appeared in sleep to the priest of the church and opposed this intention. Seventy years later the incorrupt relics were translated to Suceava, the capital of Moldo-Wallachia, and laid in the cathedral.
