Holy New Virginmartyr Zlata of Măglen

Saint Zlata of Măglen

The feast-day of Saint Luke the Evangelist and of Saint Ioulianos Saba is also shared by a young Bulgarian maiden who suffered under the Ottoman yoke: Saint Zlata of Măglen. This headstrong and holy young woman lived and died during the late 1700s, and she is venerated in particular by the Bulgarian and by the Serbian people.

Zlata [Bg. And Srb. Злата, Gk. Χρυσή, meaning ‘Golden’] was born in the village of Slatina in the region of Măglen, which was then ruled by the Ottoman Empire. (The modern town in Greece is actually named after her, and called Chrysē.) Her parents were poor villagers, who after her had three more daughters. Zlata had a character which was humble, God-loving and chaste-minded, but which also had an inner strength and resolve that was the result of careful prayer. As is often the case when young people cultivate such an inward beauty of character that becomes stamped upon the face, and it was said of her that she grew up extraordinarily beautiful. This beauty of hers was the occasion for which she suffered martyrdom, in a glorious and valiant way, for Christ.

Reading a novel like Ivan Vazov’s Under the Yoke, one is very quickly struck by the arbitrary nature of Turkish rule in the time before reform. There was no rule of law. The Bulgarian peasants were ruthlessly exploited, even more brutally than peasants in Western Europe were, and anything a Turkish paşa wanted to take from the Bulgarian peasants, he could take without fear of reprisal. That included not just crops and goods but also sexual favours, unfortunately. And any attempt to resist such a Turkish advance was met with cruel violence and tortures. (Think of what black people endured in the South under Jim Crow, and that provides perhaps not an exact picture but an approximation.)

So when a Turkish nobleman happened to see Zlata while riding through Slatina, and was at once seized with a cruel lust and a desire for her body. He followed her, concocted a plan, lay in wait. Zlata went out with some of the village women to collect firewood, not knowing that she was marked by a Turk with evil intentions upon her. He marked which house she belonged to, and also observed what times her parents and sisters came and went. Then he gathered some other Turks with him, and kidnapped her when the opportunity presented, and brought her to his home.

At first, the Turk tried to persuade her with words. He told her, that if she would convert to Islâm, he would make her his first wife, give his household into her hands, shower her with gifts and finery. He made her all sorts of these kinds of promises, not knowing that for the girl whose very name means gold, promises of gold and silver were as nothing compared to the love of Christ. She refused them all, even though she understood the sort of plight she was in. She called upon the name of the Lord, saying, ‘I believe in my Lord Jesus Christ, and I worship Him. He alone is my Bridegroom and I will never forsake him – even if you submit me to thousands of tortures and cut my body into pieces!’

The Turk and his family did not give up after this, but resorted to a different kind of cunning. He withdrew from Zlata and gave her over to his mother and sisters and female in-laws to be ‘worked on’. And they did their best to ply her, to cajole her in every possible way, to convert her to Islâm. They spoke highly of the man of the family, told her she was marrying well, pointed out the obvious material advantages; and when this didn’t work, they snubbed her, made her do the hard work and ridiculed her. But nothing worked on her. For six months they tried in vain to make her renounce Christ, and for six months she resisted steadfastly.

At last the Turk grew impatient. He had her parents and sister arrested and brought to his estate, and made all sorts of threats against both parents and her sisters. The Turk told them to persuade their daughter to convert to Islâm, otherwise he would have Zlata killed, have them tortured, have their other daughters dishonoured and have all their property confiscated. They knew all too well that these things lay within his power to do. And so, in utter dread, Zlata’s own family tried to get her to at least say she would convert, for appearance’s sake, to spare all their lives. They implored her: ‘Have pity upon yourself, on your poor parents, on your sisters; otherwise we shall all perish and be destroyed on your account! Just seem like you are renouncing Christ, so that all of us may be happy. Christ is merciful; He will forgive you the sin and understand your necessity!’

Zlata heard these things and was deeply saddened, but her resolve was even more firmly fixed. She saw this snare of the Devil and she skirted it. She made herself deaf to the tears of her parents and sisters, and told them firmly: ‘When you tell me to forsake Christ, the true God, you are no longer my parents and my sisters! I have a father in Christ; I have a mother in the Theotokos; and I have brothers and sisters in the communion of the saints!’

When the Turk who had kidnapped her heard her say this, and realised that all his planning and plotting and labours had been to no avail, he resorted to tortures. He threw Saint Zlata into a dark basement, shackled her by her wrists, and had her beaten with wooden clubs every day for three months until her blood soaked the entire floor. Then the Turks flayed the skin from her back in strips and hung them before her eyes so as to frighten and dismay her, and the blood flowed in streams down her body. At last the Turks took an iron rod, held it in the fire until it was white-hot, and impaled her through one ear and out the other, such that smoke came out of her nose and mouth.

This young girl braved torments that would overawe and break even the strongest of men. But the power of the Cross gave her an indomitable courage, and her great love for Christ which not even the tears of her family could shake gave her strength. As St Symeōn Metaphrastēs says: ‘The soul, which is bound by the chains of love to God, considers suffering to be as nothing, rejoices in pain, and flourishes in torment.’

During her imprisonment the saint heard that somewhere nearby was the Abbot Timofei of the Athonite monastery of Stavronikita, who was the spiritual father of her father. Before her death, she sent word by a Christian who visited her to him, and begged him that he would pray for her, that God would strengthen her to the very end and help her to complete the course of her martyrdom. It is from Abbot Timofei that the account of her martyrdom comes down to us.

The cruel Turk, who was not satisfied with all the tortures to which the saint was subjected, wondered how she could endure such inhuman treatment and yet not break. It wounded his pride that he could be thwarted by a mere girl. And so he had Christ’s saint hanged by her arms from a pear tree in the courtyard, and cut into small pieces. Holy Zlata, who lived up to her name being smelted and purified like a precious metal in a furnace, finished the contest and won a double wreath, being perfected in her martyrdom and in her purity of mind and resolve. In the villages of Heaven she rejoices together with the wise virgins, and with all the company of saints who have been honoured by God, sitting at the right hand of Christ, who rules forever and ever. Several of the relics of the doubly-honourable saint were taken secretly by local Christians and buried with deep reverence in her home village of Slatina, which indeed now bears her name now that Greece is again an independent country. Holy virginmartyr Zlata, more precious by far than your namesake and outshining it by far in your witness, pray unto the only Lover of Mankind that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Zlata of Măglen, Tone 1:

Having come to love the Cælestial Bridegroom,
You have shown no fear of the tortures of the wicked infidel
And have shed your blood even to death, O Zlata,
Worthy of all praise, O pride of Măglen!
That is why you are now being recompensed according to your merits:
Æternal joy in the palaces of Christ our God.
To Him do pray that He may save our souls.