26 Monastic Martyrs of Zographou

The Twenty-Six Monastic Martyrs of Zographou were the abbot, monks, and several laymen of Zographou Monastery on Mount Athos who were burned alive in the monastery for their refusal to accept the Union of Lyons. Zographou is the Bulgarian monastery of the Holy Mountain, and the martyrs are venerated chiefly in the Bulgarian tradition. The Cloud of Witnesses database records their feast on September 21; they are also widely commemorated on October 10.

Their death belongs to the controversy that followed the Second Council of Lyons. In July of 1274 the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (reigned 1261-1282), seeking political and military support from the West, accepted a union with the Roman Church at Lyons. The terms required the Orthodox to recognize the authority of the Pope, the use of the Filioque in the Creed, and the use of unleavened bread in the Liturgy. The monastic clergy and much of the laity opposed the union; the Patriarch Joseph was removed for refusing it, and according to the synaxarion a Liturgy commemorating the Pope was celebrated in Constantinople on January 9, 1275.

When agents of the emperor and of the unionist patriarch John Bekkos (who held the see from 1275 to 1282) came to Mount Athos to enforce imperial policy, the monks of Zographou shut themselves up in their monastery. From its tower they reproached the union's supporters as lawless men and heretics. The attackers thereupon set the monastery on fire and burned the twenty-six within alive. The synaxarion preserves the names of the abbot Thomas and twenty-one monks, together with four laymen who perished with them.