New Martyr Unknown

New Martyr Habakkuk

Also known as Abbakoum

A new martyr known only from an old manuscript commemoration; no account of his martyrdom survives.

Feast Day
August 6
Draft
Draft — pending review. Not yet verified for publication.
Commemorated as

The Holy New Martyr Habakkuk

Life

Habakkuk (also transliterated Abbakoum or Avvakum) is a New Martyr of the Orthodox Church commemorated on August 6, the same day as the Holy Transfiguration. Almost nothing is recorded of him: no account of his martyrdom survives, and his name appears in neither the printed Synaxaristes nor the Synaxaristes of New Martyrs. He is known solely from a brief remembrance preserved in a seventeenth-century manuscript of the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos.

According to that manuscript notice, Habakkuk bore witness to Christ at Thessaloniki, where he is recorded to have died on August 6, 1628. He should not be confused with the Old Testament Prophet Habakkuk; this Habakkuk is a later, post-Byzantine martyr known only through this single Athonite source.

Timeline 1 moments Read Hide
  1. August 6, 1628 Witness at Thessaloniki According to the seventeenth-century Great Lavra manuscript, Habakkuk died at Thessaloniki, bearing witness to Christ; this is the only date and place recorded for him.

Contributions & Legacy

2 contributions Read Hide

Sources and Identity

The memory of New Martyr Habakkuk rests entirely on a remembrance found in codex M. Lavra Omega 89, folio 155, dated to the seventeenth century. Because no narrative of his sufferings was preserved, he is absent from the standard synaxaria, and the surviving record gives little beyond his name, the place and date assigned to his witness, and his designation.

His name was first brought into hagiographical literature by Metropolitan Sophronios Eustratiades, who also published a catalogue of the manuscripts of the Great Lavra, where the remembrance of Habakkuk's martyrdom is found.

From the title 'Venerable' attached to his name, it has been inferred that Habakkuk was a monk, most probably of Mount Athos, though the manuscript does not state this explicitly.

Relics & Shrines

Portions of the relics of the Holy Martyr Habakkuk are reported to be kept at the monastery of the Nativity in Akarnania, in western Greece.

Notes

Honest stub; OCA notes the record is sparse. Not the Prophet Habakkuk.

Sources: OCA Synaxarion (oca.org), Lives of the Saints