The Holy Martyr Eustaphios was beheaded on this day in 1759. In the late 13th century, the representatives of the Repubblica di Genova bought the ancient Greek colony Theodosia from the Golden Horde. Their trade outpost received the name Kaffa and acquired significance in enriching Genoa through the slave trade. When, in 1475, the Ottomans took over Kaffa, they continued developing this “local business venue.” The Crimean Khanate, a vassal state of the Sublime Porte, became a major supplier of white slaves to the empire's markets. The Ottomans permitted the local Christian population (Rūm millet) to live their Orthodox lives as long as they realized their status as second-class subjects of their Padişah. Believing that Mohamed is the final prophet of God, Islam prohibited unrepentant conversion with the death penalty. When we read about Greek martyrs of the Turkokratia, we deal with cases when Orthodox Christians who had converted to Islam wanted to return to the faith of their fathers. Apparently, this was the case of Eustaphios. He was born in 1745. We do not have a background for Eustaphios' confession of Christ. All we know is that at the age of only fourteen, he courageously confessed his faith in the Lord before a Turkish court. Eustaphios was imprisoned and beheaded in Theodosia in 1759. He was probably buried in the Cathedral of the Assumption, located in the Bakhchysarai monastery near the residence of Gideon, then the Metropolitan of Kaffa. Due to defeat in 1754, the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca forced the Ottomans to abandon the vassalage of the Crimean Khanate. In 1783, Russia fully annexed it, and in that year, the slave trade was prohibited while it was still legal in the Russian Empire. Source: O Agios Eustathios o Martiras o ek Krimaias, Synaxiarion.gr. | 
