George Andreadis
Rating: 10|Votes: 3
There was also, for us, the humorous and long-standing belief of the Turkish Muslims in the surrounding areas that the air of Kromni was very good because no one ever died there! This was because the crypto-Christians held their funerals after dark in their house chapels. In the countryside, people had (and still have) the legal right to bury the dead on their own property, so in Kromni, the crypto-Christians were buried with Orthodox rites in their own gardens. Muslim outsiders never saw the burial services.
Rating: 7.2|Votes: 9
Although some Greeks remained openly Christian, burdensome taxes and discrimination caused many to convert to Islam and their children today are Turkish Muslims. Another large group said, "No, we will keep our religion, but how will we survive? How can we save our lives and the honor of our daughters?" In the end, they became secret Christians. Although denying Christ, even outwardly, is a sin for a Christian, during these times when many civic leaders, the educated, and wealthy turned to Islam, how could illiterate and primitive mountain people be held accountable? In many cases the Eastern Christian Church accepted the solution of crypto-Christianity so as to withstand the waves of voluntary and compulsory Islamization that were leaving churches empty of believers.
Alexander Solodovnikov
As recorded in the Menaeon of Saints, during an attack on Moscow by the Tatar hordes in 1521, a blind nun of the Ascension Convent had a prophetic vision. The following is a poem in English translation on this theme by the outstanding Russian religious poet, Alexander Solodovnikov (1893–1974).
Deacon Vladimir Vasilik
Rating: 2.3|Votes: 3
The understanding of justice has lost its ground; its motives and impulses have become one-dimensional. It has lost its noble direction, its original, sacred premises, and has submitted itself to the spirit of skepticism, in which everything is doubtful, to the spirit of relativism, and to the spirit of nihilism, which does not want to believe in anything.
Vladimir de Beer
Rating: 6.9|Votes: 14
It is remarkable that little historical evidence has remained about the saint who is venerated as Apostle to the Irish, while legends surrounding him abound. The only documentary sources regarding his life that are recognised as authentic are his Confession and an Epistle to a Northumbrian chieftain called Coroticus. According to these sources Patrick was born in western Britain, probably in Cumbria, as the son of a Roman official who was a Christian.