Icon of Sts. Andrew the General - 00STNRI01

Feast Day/Commemorated: April 9

The Holy Newly-Appeared Martyrs of Lesbos, Saints Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene, were killed by the invading Turks on Bright Tuesday, April 9, 1463, just ten years after the Fall of Constantinople. For nearly five centuries, their martyrdom and very existence were largely forgotten on the island. Though the people of Lesbos maintained an annual, unexplained pilgrimage to the ruins of a former monastery near the village of Thermi on Bright Tuesday, the true reason—the Turkish massacre of the monks—was lost to vague memory until 1959. It was in that year, when a pious man named Angelos Rallis began building a chapel near the ruins, that the first relics of Saint Raphael were discovered, initiating a miraculous revelation.

Following the initial discovery, the martyred saints began appearing to various inhabitants of Lesbos, personally revealing the details of their lives and their gruesome martyrdom. These direct, modern revelations formed the basis for the accounts compiled by Photios Kontoglou in his 1962 book, A GREAT SIGN. The saints revealed that Saint Raphael (born George on Ithaka, c. 1410) was an Archimandrite and former Chancellor, while Saint Nicholas was his fellow monastic and a deacon from Thessalonica. They had fled from Thrace to Lesbos in 1454, where Raphael became the abbot of the Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos near Thermi.

The martyrs' accounts detailed the horrific tortures they endured from Holy Thursday until their death on Bright Tuesday in 1463. Saint Raphael was tied to a tree and killed when the Turks sawed through his jaw. Saint Nicholas was tortured and died while witnessing his elder's martyrdom. They were not alone; Saint Irene, the twelve-year-old daughter of the village mayor, Basil, who had come to warn the monks, was a pure virgin who had one of her arms cut off before being suffocated in a large earthen cask over a fire. Irene's parents, Basil and Maria, along with the village teacher Theodore and a cousin, Eleni, also received the crown of martyrdom that day.

Since their miraculous re-emergence, the Newly-Appeared Martyrs have fulfilled their desire to be remembered and have become a profound source of miracles and healing. The saints not only guided the faithful to the locations of their relics and asked for their icon and a church service (which was composed by Father Gerasimos of Mt Athos) but have since performed countless miracles across Lesbos and the world. They hasten to help those who invoke them, healing the sick, consoling the sorrowful, and guiding unbelievers back to the Church, confirming their powerful role as living intercessors and patrons against suffering and affliction.

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