Born in Little Russia, he was taken by the Tartars as a boy and sold to a Turkish tanner as a slave. He spent twenty-seven years in slavery in Usaki in Asia Minor, and was forced to embrace Islam. He went off to the Holy Mountain, became a monk and spent twelve years near the monastery of St Paul. He resolved to suffer for Christ. His spiritual elder, Joseph, sent him off to Usaki, where he showed himself to his former owner as a Christian, wearing his monastic habit. The Turks gave him over to torture, then threw him into prison and finally beheaded him on May 8th, 1730, on Ascension Day. Many miracles were wrought by his blood and his relics, his body being buried on the island of Patmos in the Church of St John the Theologian. Thus this villager from Little Russia became a martyr and wears the wreath in the Kingdom of Christ. 
