The holy New Martyr Nicetas of Nisyros.
The holy New Martyr Nicetas was born on Nisyros, one of the islands of the Dodecanese, between Kos and Rhodes. Though his parents were Christians, his father renounced Christ to avoid judgment for some crime. He raised his children as Moslems, and Nicetas being too young at the time to understand, had no perception, as he grew up, that he had ever been a Christian; in fact he became a zealous in the religion in which his father raised him. One day, when Nicetas quarrelled with a Turkish boy, the boy’s mother, who knew his family’s secret, accused him of being a false convert and an unbeliever. Upset at this, Nicetas importuned his mother relentlessly to know why he had been called such things, and finally learned from her that he had indeed been born a Christian and that his name was Nicetas. After reflecting on this, he deeply desired to recover his ancestral piety and pondered how he might do so – since apostasy from Islam is punished with death.
With God’s help he was able, after a time, to sail to Chios and to find refuge in the Monastery of Nea Moni. After he confessed his identity and purpose to the abbot, the abbot sent him to Saint Macarius, Metropolitan of Corinth, now in retirement and struggling in stillness and prayer. Nicetas lived in the monastery unknown to most and kindling the love of Christ in his heart more and more. Finally he asked permission of the Fathers to present himself for martyrdom. Since he was only fifteen or sixteen years of age, some hesitated, but in the end, seeing his zeal, and that it was of his own initiative, and not from compulsion by anybody else, they gave him their blessing.
He left Nea Moni for the main port city of Chios but on the way, at a place called Molos, he was arrested for the head tax, which Christians were obliged to pay and, being found without papers to identify himself nor money to pay the tax, he was taken to prison. On the way to prison an acquaintance of his from Chios, who knew him as the Moslem Mehmet, expressed surprise that a Moslem should be force to pay the head tax. This conversation aroused the suspicion of his Moslem captor, who took him to the agha’s residence, where he was interrogated and found to be circumcised. They tortured him to compel him to renounce Christ and return to Islam, but he ignored their threats and insults and stood fast in the Faith. Then they changed their tactics to flattery and extravagant promises, which he also rejected with scorn. He was therefore subjected to beatings and tortures for ten days; then they took him out of prison, and after beating and abusing him again to compel him to renounce Christ, they beheaded him on June 21, 1732, at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Certain blind men anointed their eyes with the Martyr’s blood and received their sight.
The man who beheaded him was a particularly savage Crimean, who purposely cut off his head with many blows of the sword to prolong and intensify his pain. Because he had shown singular cruelty beyond what anybody else had inflicted on the Saint, he was visited with a trembling and quaking, like that of Cain, which never left him for the rest of his life. Besides this, the Martyr Nicetas appeared to him at night and frightened him and even trampled upon him and beat him, so that the Crimean suffered from apoplexy from the nightmares and beatings and terror. It only ceased once he had an icon of the Saint painted (perhaps at the suggestion of his wife, who was a Christian) and placed secretly in a cupboard of his divan room, hidden from the eyes of his fellow Turks. After this, the apoplexy left him, and the nightmares and the beatings ceased, although the trembling remained and his body was paralyzed, and he dragged out a miserable existence. Furthermore a knocking was heard from the cupboard in which he hid the icon, piquing the curiosity of his visitors, so that eventually the secret was exposed, and the glory of the Martyr Nicetas was made known.
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