Constantine the Russian, also called Constantios, is venerated as a new hieromartyr who suffered at Constantinople in 1743. The Orthodox Church in America's synaxarion lists him simply as "Hieromartyr Constantine the Russian of Lavra on Mount Athos," commemorated on December 26, and carries no further biographical detail. A fuller account is preserved in the Greek hagiographical tradition, where his life was recorded by the hieromonk Jonah the Kavsokalyvite and later gathered into Nikodemos the Hagiorite's New Martyrology, published in 1799.
According to that account, Constantine came from Russia — described in the sources as "the glorious kingdom of Moscovy" — and served as a priest attached to the church of the Russian Embassy at Constantinople, where he carried out his pastoral duties and led a quiet life. During the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-1761), war broke out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. When the ambassador and his staff withdrew, Constantine remained behind and distanced himself from political affairs, retiring to Mount Athos, where he lived at the Great Lavra Monastery. From there he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to venerate the holy places before returning again to the Lavra.
When peace was restored between Russia and the Ottomans, Constantine resumed his post as pastor of the embassy church under a new ambassador. The tradition relates that a serious quarrel with the ambassador led him to present himself before the sultan, where, in a moment of weakness, he denied the Christian faith and outwardly professed Islam, receiving honors and rewards. Within days he repented bitterly. Clothing himself in a tattered cassock, he returned to the sultan's palace, publicly renounced his denial, reviled Islam and its prophet, and trampled the Muslim garments he had been given. The Ottoman authorities, shamed and enraged by his open recantation, had him beheaded on the spot before the royal palace.
Constantine is numbered among the new martyrs who suffered under Ottoman rule, witnesses whose lives were collected and published in the eighteenth century to strengthen the faith of Orthodox Christians living under Muslim domination. A divine office in his honor was composed by the Athonite hymnographer Gerasimos Mikragiannanites. He is commemorated on December 26.
