Holy Hierarch John, Bishop of the Goths

Saint John of Gothia

On the Orthodox Old Calendar, today – which is the twenty-sixth of June – we celebrate the feast of Saint John, the eighth-century bishop of the Gothic people of Crimea.

Saint John was born in the trading-port (emporium) of Partenit on Taurica, to parents named Leōn and Phōteinē. As can be seen from the very Greek names of his parents, similarly to the Galatians, the Crimean Goths apparently underwent a period of profound Hellenisation. Leōn’s father hailed from the Pontic coast and had served as a mercenary in the Byzantine army, as a standard-bearer in the Theme of the Armeniacs. It is supposed by Russian Orthodox scholarly sources that Leōn’s family had fled the Pontus for Taurica on account of the Iconoclast persecutions of Emperor Leōn III the Isaurian. There is no indication of the education or occupation of John before he entered the monastic life.

In 754, during the reign of Emperor Kōnstantinos V Koprōnymos, the bishop of Doros in Gothia was summoned to an Iconoclast robber-council of Hieria. The Goths of Taurica rejected this council adamantly, both its canons and the archpastor that had been chosen for them. Instead they elected as bishop from among their ranks, John – who was then most likely a layman. The reasons for this are not exactly clear – there wasn’t a strongly-developed tradition of icon veneration among the Goths at this time. But the position of the Gothic community was made clear by their own choice of bishop. At this time they were politically independent enough of Constantinople – though they were already under the heel of the Khazar Khanate – in order to defend such a choice without running the risk of political repercussions.

After the Robber-Council of Hieria, the new bishop John left Doros on pilgrimage to al-Quds, where he stayed for three years and visited all the holy places. It may have been the case that he had come there to seek consecration as bishop from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theodōros. However, it appears that Patriarch Theodōros was unwilling, most likely because canon law forbade him to consecrate a bishop within the territory of Constantinople. That being the case, John politely and reverently took his leave of al-Quds, and proceeded into Iberia – that is to say, the country of Georgia, which had as yet been untouched by the hæresy of Iconoclasm. When he got to Mtskheta in the year 758, he was greeted warmly by the Georgian Catholicos Ioane III, who gladly anointed John a bishop.

Following the consecration of John, he returned as the Metropolitan of Doros. He sent a deacon, Longinus, to al-Quds to retrieve a confession of faith from the Iconophile Patriarch Theodōros, which he not only confessed but read to the entire congregation in Doros. He took this confession of faith with him when Empress Eirēnē Sarantapēkhaina took the laurels in Constantinople in 780, and forwarded a copy of it to Œcumenical Patriarch Paulos IV. Although the new empress allowed him safe passage into the city, Saint John was apparently not recognised as the canonical bishop of the Goths. Empress Eirēnē had not yet decided to distance herself finally from Iconoclasm. Even so, he had a very good personal rapport with the Iconophile Empress, and was permitted to give several polemical orations against the Iconoclasts, apparently with her protection, in Constantinople. It is probable that he delivered these Iconophile homilies from the Hagia Sophia. Saint John’s name does not appear in the canons of the Seventh Œcumenical Council; instead, the Gothic Church is represented at the Œcumenical Council by the bishop Nikitas – Metropolitan John’s protégé – and the deacon Euthymios.

Around this time as well, there began to be political troubles between the Goths and their rulers in the Khazar Khanate. Russian sources note the difficulty of assigning a certain chronology to the events of the anti-Khazar uprising in Gothia, as well as ascertaining the precise nature of Saint John’s involvement. The khaghan of the Khazars captured Doros, probably in 784, and set up a garrison. The Goths, not used to being militarily occupied or being subject to harsh taxes, revolted. Saint John took a leading role in this revolt, uniting the Goths against their occupiers. He managed to expel the garrison, and took control of the mountain passes (klisury) connecting the Gothic coastal settlements with the Crimean steppe.

Saint John was apparently opposed by one faction or one village of the Goths, who betrayed him and handed him over to the Khazar khaghan. With the loss of their bishop, the Goths decided to seek terms with the khaghan and surrender. Very likely, in this way they saved the life of their Metropolitan. As punishment for the riots, instead of making mass reprisals, the khaghan had seventeen innocent Gothic slaves beheaded, while Saint John was put in chains and thrown into prison at the city of Fully.

By a wonder of God, however, Saint John managed to escape his confinement. The Goths who connived at his escape were captured by the khaghan, and he made plans to execute them. However, as Saint John prayed for them the heart of the khaghan was moved to mercy, and he spared their lives, as he said, because ‘the crime was not their own’. He set sail for the ‘Christ-loving city’ of Amastris (named for the Persian princess who lived there), in Paphlagonia on the Black Sea coast. He was given shelter by the kindly Saint Geōrgios of Amastris, and he lived in that city for the rest of his earthly life.

While in Amastris, two men brought before the Gothic bishop a dispute over a jug of wine. When the two men refused to be reconciled to each other, Saint John prayed. The wine in the jug began to curdle and thicken like cheese, and the two men had to chop it up and throw it away. After this, they repented of their sin and were reconciled to each other. Saint John worked several wonders like this, and the common folk of Amastris came to awe and respect him, and they repented and lived a godly life upon witnessing and hearing of his works.

One day probably in 788 or 790, word of the Khazar khaghan’s death reached Amastris. When Saint John heard of it, he spoke: ‘Brethren, I shall depart after forty days, to stand trial with him before the Lord God.’ As he said it, so it happened: after exhorting his followers with salvific words, Saint John fell asleep in the Lord forty days after. The saint had foretold that a ship would arrive in Amastris to carry his body back to Taurica, and this too came to pass. Saint Geōrgios led a procession with candles and incense to the shore, and placed the relics of Saint John upon the boat and gave it his blessing. The ship sailed back to Taurica at wondrous speed, and the Gothic saint was interred at a monastery he’d founded to the memory of the Holy Apostles on the eastern slopes of Ayuv Dağ. Healing wonders continued at his tomb there, and drew many pilgrims to that place.

A couple of notes here. According to the genetic genealogical research I’ve been doing, a significant amount of my heritage – between a third and two-fifths – is linked to the various East Teutonic peoples who rampaged their way across the Balkans and Southern Europe in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. I am very closely related to a certain female Visigoth who was buried at the necropolis of Pla de l’Horta in eastern Spain in the middle of the sixth century. Though Saint John’s family never came near Spain, still he is a member of a linguistic and ethnic community – the Crimean Goths – that preserved the distinctions of a related Gothic culture, well after the Visigothic Kingdom had disintegrated. So there is definitely an aspect of Rujia-inspired ancestor veneration to my remembering Saint John today.

On another point: Saint John’s revolt against the Khazars was a political one. Saint John and the Goths objected to their political enslavement and the unwanted fortification and garrison being placed in Doros under the khaghan. It is sad that his memory has been appropriated by a group of people whose only interest in his life and saintly cultus, is as a mascot for their own modernist politics of hæretical phyletism. This is a phyletism which Saint John himself, as an eighth-century man and as an Orthodox hierarch, would not have condoned. Those elements of it which he would have seen, like the Gothic Orthodox historian Jordanes, we may reasonably assume from his Life he would have criticised. Saint John of Gothia was equally at home as a pilgrim among the Palestinian Greeks and Arabs in al-Quds, or in the Iberian Mtskheta, or in the multicultural metropolis of Constantinople under Empress Eirēnē. It is therefore important to venerate Saint John of Gothia today, because not one aspect of the Orthodox Faith which Saint John defended should be left to those who would coöpt it into a political idolatry of the ethnos instead of worshipping Christ our Lord, Who is all in all, and Who gave Himself on behalf of all and for all. Holy hierarch John, stalwart of Orthodoxy against the iconoclasts and defender of the freedoms of your people, pray unto Christ our God on behalf of your wayward and sinful children!

Apolytikion to Saint John of Gothia, Tone 1:

O Orthodox patron of Taurica,
Ornament of the threshold of Parvenit,
Source of wondrous mercies
And firm confessor of the Truth
O Holy Father John,
Pray unto Christ God Whom you loved even from your youth,
Grant us the gifts of your God-pleasing zeal,
Pacify the world and save our souls.

Православныя Таврии покровителю,
Партенитских пределов украсителю,
Чудес милосердия источниче,
Истины твердый исповединче,
Святителю Отче Иоанне,
Моли Христа Бога, Егоже от юности возлюбил еси,
Ревность о Богоугождении нам даровати,
Умирити мир и спасти души наша.

Monument to Saint John of Gothia, Partenit, Crimea