Venerable Martyr James with His Disciples James and Dionysius

Life

James was born in the Diocese of Kastoria of parents Martin and Paraskeva. Working with sheep, James became wealthy, and thereby provoked the envy of his brother, who slandered him to the Turks, claiming that he had found some treasure in the earth. James fled to Constantinople, where he again became very wealthy. Once James was a guest at the house of a certain Turkish bey. The Turks were eating meat, but James was fasting. Then that bey said: "Great is your Christian Faith!" And he recounted how his wife had been mentally ill, and how he, after all the doctors and treatments, had taken her to the patriarch to read a prayer over her. As soon as the patriarch opened the book to read, a certain heavenly light shone throughout the church. After the prayer was finished, his wife was healed. Hearing the Turk praise the Christian Faith, James distributed all his possessions and went to the Holy Mountain, where he became a monk at the Monastery of Iveron. He struggled ascetically on the Holy Mountain, and suffered for the Faith at the hands of the Turks in Adrianople on November 1, 1520. His wonderworking relics, as well as those of his disciples, repose in the Monastery of Saint Anastasia in Galachiston near Thessalonica.