The life of St George of Chios
As a young man of twenty-two, engaged to be married, he was betrayed to the Turkish authorities by a man with whom he had a financial quarrel, who accused him of having reverted from Islam to Christianity, a charge that under Ottoman law could bring death.
He was imprisoned for over two weeks while Christians of the city kept vigil and prayed for his strength, and in his cell he confessed and received Communion once his sentence was set. On the morning of his execution a great crowd gathered outside the prison. Led out to die, George ran ahead of his own executioner, praying the Jesus Prayer aloud, and when pressed once more to save himself by returning to Islam, he refused, declaring that he wished to die an Orthodox Christian. He was shot and then beheaded, still praying, at the age of twenty-two, in 1807. The faithful buried him secretly, and his memory has been kept ever since across Chios, Lesvos, and the neighboring islands.
