Happy Thanksgiving from The Pillar!
In honor of Thanksgiving this year, we wanted to share the stories of five saints who lived in modern-day Turkey.
As you sit down to your turkey feast this year, you may want to ask one or all of them to intercede for you.
Saint George
St. George was a Roman soldier and martyr in the third century. He was born in Cappadoccia (present-day Turkey).
Veneration of St. George stretches back to at least the fifth century, but little is known today about his life.
Historical accounts agree about his death, however. When Diocletian became emperor and began a widespread persecution of Christians, George was pressured to renounce his Christian faith. He refused to do so, and was subsequently tortured and beheaded around 300 AD.
Today, St. George is most well known for a legend that recounts him defeating a fierce dragon that had been terrorizing a local village near Silene, Libya.
According to the legend, the dragon demanded first livestock and then human tributes to keep it from attacking the village.
St. George one day encountered a young woman crying in the woods. She told him that he had been selected as tribute to be fed to the dragon.
The young woman urged St. George to turn back, lest he too face the dragon’s vicious wrath. However, the saint, invoking the power of God, instead battled and slayed the dragon, saving the young woman and the whole village.
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Saint Olympias
St. Olympias was a noblewoman and widow in Constantinople in the fourth century.
She was born into a wealthy family, but her parents both died when she was a child.
Widowed just a year after being wed, Olympias found herself in possession of an immense fortune. Although she received several offers to remarry, she declined, instead pledging to serve God as his Church as a deaconess.
She donated her fortune to the Church and established a monastery, orphanage, and hospital in Constantinople, devoted to prayer and tending to the poor. She became renowned for her generosity.
Olympias became friends with St. John Chrysostom. When the bishop was sent into exile by the empress, Olympias faced persecution for supporting him. She eventually dissolved her community and went into exile as well.
She would spend the rest of her life in Nicomedia (modern-day Turkey), where she died in 408 AD.
St. Olympias is one of the saints who is depicted in the St. Peter’s colonnade in Rome.
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Saint Nicholas
Best known as the “saint who became Santa,” St. Nicholas was a third-century bishop of Myra. Born into a wealthy family around 280 AD in Patara (present-day Turkey), Nicholas’ parents died in an epidemic.
Nicholas became known for his piety and generosity, using his family’s wealth to care for the poor and needy. Among the most popular stories surrounding the beloved saint is the account of him tossing coins into a poor man’s house to save his daughters from being forced into prostitution.
He’s also known for allegedly striking the heretic Arius during the Council of Nicea, a tale that, while popular, is unlikely to be true.
Other parts of Nicholas’ life, while less known, are quite remarkable. He reportedly became bishop by being in the right place at the right time. During an episcopal vacancy, the priests of Myra had decided that the first priest to enter the local church one morning would become the new bishop, and Nicholas was the first to come to the church to pray early that day.
He once saved several innocent men from execution. And he was reported to work miracles during his life, including one account in which he brought three murdered children back to life.
Today, St. Nicholas is not only the patron of children and toymakers, but also of pharmacists, fisherman, pawnbrokers, brewers, and the Russian Navy, among other groups.
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Saint Pulcheria
St. Pulcheria was empress of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The eldest surviving daughter of Byzantine Emperor Arcadius, Pulcheria was born in the year 399 AD in Constantinople (present-day Turkey).
Her father died when she was nine years old, and her younger brother, Theodosius II, became emperor. Just seven years old, he was inept as a leader.
However, Pulcheria, admired for her wisdom beyond her years, showed promise as a leader, first as an advisor to her younger brother, and then after being proclaimed empress and regent for her brother by the Senate.
She ruled alongside her brother for a decade, until he wed. His new wife worked to decrease Pulcheria’s power. She eventually retired from political life and spent several years living a quiet rural life.
However, when her brother died without a son, Pulcheria returned to public life, choosing his successor by marriage. She agreed to marry a respected general, Marcian, on the condition that their marriage would be one of sexual continence, to respect the vow of virginity she had taken as a teenager.
Throughout her life, Pulcheria used her influence to support orthodoxy in the Church, opposing the heresies surrounding the Third and Fourth Ecumenical Councils.
She was also known for fasting, prayer, and rejecting luxurious apparel.
She did in 453, with her will instructing that her wealth should go to the poor.
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Blessed Ignatius Maloyan
Blessed Ignatius Maloyan was an Armenian Catholic archbishop in Mardin, Turkey. He was martyred in 1915, at the start of the Armenian Genocide.
Born in 1869 in Mardin, Maloyan was ordained a priest and served in Egypt for a number of years before being selected as Archbishop of Mardin in 1911.
When World War I broke out, the Armenian people in Turkey faced increasing hostility from the Ottoman government.
In June 1915, Maloyan was arrested, along with more than 400 other prominent Christian leaders in Mardin.
The archbishop was accused of being a terrorist leader and ordered to convert to Islam or face death.
He refused, saying he would rather die than renounce his Catholic faith. He was subsequently beaten and tortured. His toenails were ripped out as he audibly begged God for strength.
Shortly thereafter, Maloyan and some 400 other Christian prisoners were forced to commence a death march into the desert.
The archbishop encouraged and strengthened those around him. He instructed the priests in the group to grant absolution to the other prisoners.
After watching the other prisoners be massacred before his eyes, Maloyan was given one last chance to convert to Islam, with a promise that if he did so, his life would be spared.
He responded, “I’ve told you I shall live and die for the sake of my faith and religion. I take pride in the cross of my God and Lord.” He was promptly shot and killed.
When Pope John Paul II beatified Maloyan in 2001, he praised the archbishop as a witness of uncompromising faith in the face of persecution.
“It is in the Eucharist that he drew, day by day, the force necessary to accomplish his priestly ministry with generosity and passion, dedicating himself to preaching, to a pastoral life connected with the celebration of the sacraments and to the service of the neediest,” the pope said in his homily.
