The New Martyrs under the Ottomans

Between the fall of Constantinople and Greek independence, several hundred Christians were put to death for the faith under Ottoman rule, and the Church calls them the New Martyrs to distinguish them from the martyrs of the first three centuries without ranking them below. Many were people who had converted to Islam, often as children or under duress, and then returned to Christ publicly knowing what the law prescribed for it. St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St Macarius of Corinth collected their accounts in the New Martyrologion of 1799, partly to answer Western writers who said the Greek Church was dead. The collecting was itself an act of resistance.