New Martyr Triandaphyllus of Stara Zagora

Life and Martyrdom

Triandaphyllus came from Zagora of Magnesia, in Thessaly, a coastal district whose people lived largely from the sea; sources variously remember him as a sailor or a fisherman. He lived under Ottoman rule, the setting in which the New Martyrs of the post-Byzantine centuries gave their witness.

While at Constantinople he was pressed to deny Christ and accept Islam. He refused, professing himself an Orthodox Christian who would not deny his Saviour, and for this confession he was beheaded in 1680. The synaxarion records that he was about fifteen years old, though other accounts give a somewhat older age.

By the tradition preserved in the Greek sources, his execution took place in the Hippodrome of Constantinople.

Veneration and Relics

Triandaphyllus is especially honored in his native Zagora and at Alykes in Volos, in Greece. A portion of his relics is kept at the Monastery of Saint Nicholas on the island of Andros, where they may be venerated.

Accounts of the saint differ on points of detail: alongside the Greek tradition that places his origin at Zagora of Magnesia, a Bulgarian Life associates him with a village called Stara Gora and dates his birth to 1663. The records likewise vary as to whether he was a sailor or a fisherman and as to his precise age at martyrdom.