Orthodox · † 1648
Hieromartyr Athanasius of Brest-Litovsk
Commemorated: September 18 (September 5, Old Style)
Life
Athanasius Filippovich was born around 1597 and from 1638 was abbot of the Orthodox monastery of St Simeon in Brest, in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Church of Brest had been joined to Rome in the Union of Brest in 1596, and Orthodox clergy such as Athanasius opposed it.
In July 1648, during the Cossack uprising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, he was arrested on suspicion of helping the rebels and released for lack of evidence. Asked by a Catholic bishop what he thought of the Union, he is said to have called it cursed. He was imprisoned in the castle of Brest and killed on the night of 4–5 September 1648; accounts differ on whether by sentence or by shooting in a forest. His relics were found and moved in 1679.
Places
- Place of birth: Brest
- Place of death: Brest
- Place of burial: Brest
Retold briefly in our own words from: Wikipedia (to check the facts).
The commemorations of the day: Ponomar (ponomar.net), CC BY-SA 3.0.
Places and years: Wikidata (CC0), each saint matched by hand.