Venerable Martyrs of David Gareji: Gerontius, Serapion, Germanus, Bessarion, Michael, Simeon and Otar (†1851) — August 12 / August 25 (Julian Calendar)

On this day, August 12 according to the Julian Calendar (August 25 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates the Venerable Martyrs of David Gareji: Gerontius, Serapion, Germanus, Bessarion, Michael, Simeon and Otar.

The venerable Gerontius, Serapion, Germanus, Bessarion, Michael, Simeon and Otar labored in the wilderness of David Gareji.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the wilderness of David Gareji became the constant object of Lezgin invasions and pillage. The raiders destroyed churches and monasteries and the cells of the monks, carried off the precious vessels needed for divine services, and tortured and killed the fathers who labored there.

In the summer of 1851 a great band of Lezgins fell upon the Gareji wilderness and sacked the Lavra of Saint David. „They began to torture the fathers and the brethren. First the hierodeacon Otar was slain by an unseen sword; then they cut off the head of the hieromonk Gerontius; the hieromonk Serapion they struck upon the head with a sword, and he reposed; the monk Germanus they disemboweled and afterward beheaded; the monk Bessarion they beheaded at once. The deacon Simeon, who was young in years, began to flee, but stricken by an unseen sword he could go no further, and afterward they cut off his head as well. And Michael, who was received in silence and was exceedingly obedient to the brotherhood and to the monastery, they tortured more than all the others…

„After the repose of those venerable fathers a great light came down and rested upon the martyrs… They are worthy that, after the corruption of the flesh, their bones should be taken up and laid beside the venerable fathers martyred before them… and that their feast be commemorated from year to year. I, the unworthy Isaac of the great monastery of Gelati, who was myself held captive together with them and who beheld these things with my own eyes, have written this account of the martyrdom of the holy fathers, an abridged history.”

So writes the monk Isaac in a letter addressed to Platon Ioseliani. He himself had been carried off to Dagestan as a captive by the lawless ones, and was afterward ransomed by the Russian Emperor Nicholas, the son of Paul.

Sadly, many such accounts were never written down, and the cruelty of the times erased many of the histories that were written, so that biographical information about the saints is now difficult to come by. Yet glory be to God: our Church always renders honor to her heavenly holy members and asks their intercession.