Venerable Martyrs of Gareji: Gerontius, Serapion, Germanus, Bessarion, Michael, Symeon and Otar (+1851)

The Venerable Gerontius, Serapion, Germanus, Bessarion, Michael, Symeon and Otar laboured in the desert of David Gareja.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the desert of David Gareja became the object of constant raids and plunder by the Leks. The raiders destroyed churches and monasteries and the monks’ cells, carried off the precious vessels needed for divine service, and tortured and killed the fathers who laboured there.

In the summer of 1851 a large band of Leks attacked the desert of Gareji. They plundered the lavra of David. “They began to torment the fathers and brethren. First the monk-deacon Otar died by an unseen sword; then the head of the hieromonk Gerontius was cut off; they struck the hieromonk Serapion on the head with a sword, and he died; they ripped open the belly of the monk Germanus and afterwards cut off his head. The head of the monk Bessarion they cut off at once. The deacon Symeon, who was young in years, began to flee, and, struck by an unseen sword that was thrown, could go no further, and then they cut off his head. But Michael, who had been received in silence and was very obedient to the community and the monastery, they tormented more than the others…

After the death of those venerable fathers a great light came down and rested upon the martyrs… They are worthy that, after the decay of the flesh, their bones be brought up and laid with the venerable fathers martyred before them… and that their feast be kept year by year. I, the unworthy Isaac of the great monastery of Gaenati, who was myself a captive with them and saw it with my own eyes, have written the martyrdom of the holy fathers, this shortened history, neither more nor less,” writes the monk Isaac in a letter to Platon Ioseliani; the lawless had carried him off captive to Daghestan, and afterwards he was ransomed by the Russian Emperor Nicholas, son of Paul.

Unhappily many such stories have remained unwritten, and the malice of the times has wiped out many that were written; the biographical information about the saints has been lost and is hard to find; but glory to God, our Church always pays honour to its heavenly holy members and asks for their intercession.