Our Holy Father, the Martyr Gideon.

Commemorated December 30 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

A Greek by birth, of very poor parents, he was forced to embrace Islam as a youth. In remorse, he fled to the Holy Mountain, where, in the monastery of Karakallou, he received the monastic habit. Desiring martyrdom for Christ, he received the blessing of his spiritual father and went to the place where he had been forced into Islam, and there, openly before the Turks, confessed the Christian faith and denounced Mohamet as a false prophet. The Turks shaved his head, placed him upside-down on a donkey and led him through the town. He rejoiced at this ridicule for the sake of Christ. They then chopped off all his fingers and toes with an axe, as they had once done to St James the Persian (Nov. 27th), and finally threw him into a place of excrement, where he gave his holy soul to God in the year 1818, in Turnovo in Thrace. His wonderworking relics are preserved in the church of the Holy Apostles in the village of Turnovo, and a part of them is to be found in his monastery of Karakallou.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK