Holy Hieromartyr Ya‘qûb of al-Ḥamaṭûrâ

Saint Ya‘qûb of al-Ḥamaṭûrâ

In the Orthodox Church today – the thirteenth of October – we celebrate a newly-rediscovered martyr for Christ in what is now northern Lebanon: Saint Ya‘qûb of al-Ḥamaṭûrâ. A resident of the town of Kûsbâ in the Wâdî Qâdîšâ (that is, ‘Holy Valley’, so called because of the large number of Christian monasteries sheltering there), this monk reestablished the monastery of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos at al-Ḥamaṭûrâ and resisted attempts by the Mamâlîk Sultanate to convert him to Islâm. For this he was martyred at Tripoli at their hands. His cultus was unfortunately neglected until 2002.

Saint Ya‘qûb [Gk. Ιάκωβος, Ar. Ya‘qûb يعقوب], also in English Jacob or James, began his ascetic life at al-Ḥamaṭûrâ, late in the thirteenth century. When the Mamâlîk destroyed the monastery, Saint Ya‘qûb set up cells for himself and the other monks along one of the ruined walls, and gave himself to prayer and fasting and vigils, as well as to the hard manual labour of rebuilding the monastery complex. The asceticism of the monks of al-Ḥamaṭûrâ bore fruit, and soon enough the monastery was again rebuilt and thriving. Monastic life was restored, and throughout the region Orthodox Christian monasticism was given a renewed vigour by Saint Ya‘qûb’s heroic spiritual labours.

Saint Ya‘qûb was possessed, according to his hagiography, of a ‘spiritual briskness, vivacity and popularity with believers’ that made him a political threat to the new Mamluk sultan. The Islâmic sultanate tried without cease to thwart the monk and, if possible, convert him. They used subtle pressures at first, but their coercive measures increased in intensity and brutality – but all to no effect, for Saint Ya‘qûb adamantly refused to convert.

The Mamluk gendarmes then resorted to more drastic measures. As Saint Ya‘qûb was praying in solitude on top of the Jabal al-Ḥamaṭûrâ in the shrine of Saint George the Greatmartyr, a detachment of soldiers arrested him, bound his hands, and dragged him behind their horses. They sent him along with a group of monks and Christian laymen to Tripoli to stand trial before the wâli. At his trial, the wâli first tried to flatter the saint and cajole him by promising him wealth and glory. When this failed to sway Ya‘qûb, the wâli resorted to threats, and then to gruesome tortures. Over the following year, Saint Ya‘qûb was made to endure much suffering, but with a patience born of his faith; he did not once submit to the governor’s demands.

On the thirteenth of October, Saint Ya‘qûb’s martyrific trials were ended when he was beheaded on the wâli’s orders. In this way he achieved the crown of victory. But the Mamâlîk committed yet another cruel sacrilege upon his remains. Fearing that Christians would take away his relics to enshrine and venerate them, they prepared a pyre and threw Saint Ya‘qûb’s body on it, standing guard around it until nothing remained of him but ashes. In his own time, however, the Christians did hear of Saint Ya‘qûb and they did at once venerate him as a saint, cherishing his memory and zealously beseeching his intercessions with Christ.

One of the tragœdies, however, of the long occupation of Lebanon at the hands of the Mamâlîk – and then of the Ottomans – is that the spiritual life among the general populace did suffer, and general literacy in religious matters declined. Some things that ought not to have been forgotten were lost. One of these was the cultus of Saint Ya‘qûb. Even so, even centuries afterward, pilgrims to the Wâdî Qâdîšâ would recount the way an unknown saint would appear to them, performing miraculous healings, and doing other deeds of divine grace. In 2002, in the archives of Balamand Monastery, a document numbered 149 was discovered: a Gerontikon (a ‘manuscript of elders’, that is to say a compilation of saints’ lives) in which Saint Ya‘qûb of al-Ḥamaṭûrâ was explicitly mentioned, and his feast-day unambiguously identified as the thirteenth of October. That year, on the thirteenth of October, 2002, the Ḥamaṭûrâ monastery held an all-night prayer vigil in commemoration of Saint Ya‘qûb, which was attended with great joy and festivity by many monks, priests and laity in Lebanon.

Saint Ya‘qûb’s tale does not end here. At one time he appeared in a vision to a local woman, telling her where his relics were buried. She told the monks but her vision went unheeded – after all, the tale went that his remains had been burned and the ashes scattered. But on the third of July, 2008, as some renovations to the floor of the monastery were being done, they discovered beneath it the human remains of three people. The forensic scientist Dr Naji Saaiby was able to determine that they belonged to two adults – one in his fifties and one in his forties at time of death – and one three-year-old child. Carbon dating showed the oldest skeleton to be 650 years old. The adult bones showed signs of beating and torture, as well as blows to the head. The remains of the fifty-year-old man, furthermore, showed signs of heat stress and carbonisation – as though they had been exposed to a very hot fire; moreover, the second neck vertebra was lost. This was consistent with a person who had been beheaded. There was little question of this but that these were the relics of Saint Ya‘qûb.

It was clear, moreover, that those who had buried them under the altar of the Church had considered them to be holy, and that they had done so in haste. This was likely the result of a persecution. (The church had been reconsecrated on the sixteenth of October, 1894, because it had been vandalised prior to that date.) The relics were again blessed by Metropolitan Georges (Khodr) of Byblos and Botrys translated into a new reliquary in a place of honour in the Church, dedicated to ‘the Martyr-Fathers of al-Ḥamaṭûrâ’. Holy Hieromartyr Ya‘qûb, steadfast preserver of the monastic tradition in Lebanon, and all those with you, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Ya‘qûb of al-Ḥamaṭûrâ, Tone 3:

As a cedar of Lebanon groweth without fear of martyrdom and death,
Thou didst become a victor, O Father Ya‘qûb,
Thou didst conquer death in thy body when by humility thou didst control the passions
And when thou wast burnt like incense as a sacrifice.
Intercede with Christ to grant us great mercy.