Avakum the Deacon was a Serbian monk and deacon martyred by the Ottoman authorities in Belgrade in the wake of the suppressed Serbian uprisings of the early nineteenth century. According to his life, he was born in Bosnia around 1794 and named Lepoje by his parents; after the death of his father in his childhood, his mother brought him to the Mostanica monastery, where his uncle served as spiritual father. He was raised in the monastery, took monastic vows under the name Avakum, and at the age of eighteen was ordained a deacon by Metropolitan Joseph (Sakabenta). He is not to be confused with the Old Testament Prophet Habakkuk, whose name he shares.
After an unsuccessful revolt against the Turks in 1809, Avakum and his brethren relocated to the Annunciation monastery in Trnava near Cacak, where Saint Paisius served as igumen. When the First Serbian Uprising under Karageorge collapsed in 1813, the Trnava community became involved in a further rebellion led by Hadji-Prodan Gligorijevic, which broke out around the Feast of the Cross (September 14) but was likewise crushed by Ottoman forces. Avakum, Paisius, and other clergy of Trnava were captured and brought to Suleiman Pasha in Belgrade, where they were imprisoned, according to several accounts, in the Nebojsa Tower.
The captured rebels were offered their lives in exchange for conversion to Islam, and most refused. Avakum rejected the offer despite repeated pressure, including, by tradition, the entreaties of his former spiritual father and of his own mother, who is said to have urged him to recant in order to save his life. The synaxarion relates that, witnessing his fearlessness and faith, his executioners ultimately put him to death by the sword rather than the impalement to which he had been sentenced. He is commemorated together with Saint Paisius on December 17, and the two are numbered among the New Martyrs of Serbia.
