Saint and Martyr Agapius of Galatista (Greek : Άγιος Ιερομάρτυς Αγάπιος ο εκ Γαλατίστης) was born in Galatista, a town in Chalkidiki, Macedonia (Greece), in 1710. At that time, Galatista was a Bishopry and had many schools providing formidable education. The same town was the birthplace of the hagiographers Galatsanoi, who painted many icons and murals in the Mount Athos Vatopedi monastery.
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning more than 3000 years of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.
Chalkidiki, also spelt Chalkidike, Chalcidice, Khalkidhiki or Halkidike, is a peninsula and regional unit of Greece, part of the Region of Central Macedonia in Northern Greece. The autonomous Mount Athos region constitutes the easternmost part of the peninsula, but not of the regional unit.
Macedonia is a geographic and former administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and second-most-populous Greek region, with a population of 2.38 million in 2017. The region is highly mountainous, with most major urban centres such as Thessaloniki and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Together with Thrace, and sometimes also Thessaly and Epirus, it is part of Northern Greece. It also contains Mount Athos, an autonomous monastic region of Greece. Macedonia forms part of Greece's national frontier with three countries: Bulgaria to the north-east, the Republic of North Macedonia to the north, and Albania to the north-west.
Agapius, when still young, travelled to Jerusalem, where he became first a monk and later a priest by Patriarch Parthenius (1737–1766). He returned to Thessaloniki, where he served as a priest. In 1743, he was sent to Moscow to collect charities and financial assistance to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and remained there till 1747.
Thessaloniki, also familiarly known as Thessalonica, Salonica or Salonika, is the second-largest city in Greece, with over 1 million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of Greek Macedonia, the administrative region of Central Macedonia and the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace. Its nickname is η Συμπρωτεύουσα (Symprotévousa), literally "the co-capital", a reference to its historical status as the Συμβασιλεύουσα (Symvasilévousa) or "co-reigning" city of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, alongside Constantinople.
He returned to Thessaloniki, where he taught at the Athos Academy and other schools. On 18 August 1752, Agapius was tortured and murdered by Janissaries on his way from Galatista to Thessaloniki. It is not known where he was buried. He was honored as a saint for the first time in 1997 and since then his memory is observed on 18 August.
