Fathers slain at the Monastery of St Sabbas the Sanctified

The Holy Fathers slain at the Monastery of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified were a community of monks of the Great Lavra near Jerusalem who were killed by Saracen raiders in the eighth century. They are commemorated together on March 20. The synaxarion names several individuals among them, including John, Sergius, and Patrick, while the remainder are remembered collectively as a single martyred brotherhood.

According to the tradition, the region around Jerusalem suffered repeated Saracen incursions during the eighth century, in the course of which the nearby monastery of Saint Chariton was devastated. The fathers of the Lavra of Saint Sabbas could have withdrawn to the safety of Jerusalem, but they chose to remain, resolving not to abandon the place where they had pursued the monastic life for many years.

The account relates two assaults. In the first, the raiders broke into the monastery, demanded its valuables, and shot arrows at the monks; thirteen men were killed and many wounded, and the monastic cells were set on fire. In the second and larger assault, said to have fallen on Great Thursday, the survivors were driven into the church and tortured to make them reveal where treasure was hidden. The synaxarion relates that eighteen men perished in a cave when the attackers lit suffocating fires; the surviving monks afterward gathered and buried the bodies of the slain.