What the Ottomans did to Christian nuns was worse than death!

Imagine the scent of ink from ancient parchments still lingering in the air. On this night of August 17, 1438, in the misty hills of Thessaly, a convent perched high on the heights is living its final hours. But what will happen to the 37 nuns within will be far worse than death.

The sound of the bells rings out one last time. The trembling hands of a young nun, Sister Euphemia, desperately grasp the bronze clapper, knowing that this familiar sound, which had marked her life for 15 years, will never ring again. The scent of fear mingles with the smell of candle wax burning in the chapel. Below, the torches of the Ottoman soldiers form a river of fire that rises inexorably toward the monastery walls. The dull thud of their footsteps on stone, the metallic clanking of their armor—all this shatters the sacred silence of this place that had been a haven of peace for three centuries. Inside the main chapel, 37 nuns kneel one last time before the white marble altar.

They don’t know it yet, but their true torment will not be physical torture. It will be something far more terrifying: the complete erasure of their existence, their names, their faith, their very memory. Everything will be methodically removed from the archives of history as if they had never existed. That night marks the beginning of a story the Ottoman Empire will attempt to destroy completely. A story of silent resistance, unwavering faith, and a secret that will remain buried for nearly five centuries beneath the foundations of an imperial palace. A secret discovered by chance in 1923 that will reveal one of the most shocking truths ever concealed. Welcome to Forgotten Stories. I am your guide to the darkest and most mysterious corners of the past.

What we will discover together tonight will reveal how 37 women transformed their captivity into an extraordinary act of spiritual resistance. But let’s begin at the start of that fateful night. The Holy Trinity Convent had been founded in 1147 by the Byzantine Empress Irene Doukas. For nearly three centuries, this massive limestone building had housed generations of nuns who dedicated their lives to prayer, the study of sacred texts, and helping the surrounding villagers. The two-meter-thick walls, originally designed to protect against bandits, would prove utterly inadequate against the approaching Ottoman army.

On the night of August 17, 1438, the Ottoman commander Mehmed Bey received clear orders from Constantinople. Sultan Murad I, in his desire to extend his control over the Balkans, would tolerate no bastion of Christian resistance in the newly conquered territories. However, unlike other military sieges of the time, this one had a particular dimension. The nuns were not simply to be killed or driven out. They were to be captured alive. Why this difference in treatment? Documents discovered much later in the Ottoman archives of Topkapi Palace suggest a chilling reason. These women, considered living symbols of the Orthodox Christian faith, were to serve as an example. Their forced conversion was intended to demonstrate the absolute superiority of the empire over any form of spiritual resistance. The siege lasted exactly seven hours. At dawn on August 18, the convent gates gave way under the battering ram.

What happened next was recorded in the personal diary of an Ottoman secretary named Ibrahim Alrazi. This document wasn’t discovered until 1847 by a French archivist in a private collection in Istanbul. In his words, the soldiers found the nuns gathered in the chapel, singing Byzantine hymns in unwavering voices. This scene deeply disturbed the Ottoman soldiers. Ibrahim wrote: “Although they were prisoners and death surrounded them on all sides, they sang as if celebrating a victory.” This spiritual, nonviolent, yet absolute resistance became the first act of a long defiance that would mark their captivity. Before continuing this extraordinary story of resistance, allow me to invite you to join our community. If you are fascinated by these tales from the shadows of history, subscribe to Forgotten Stories. Each week, we explore together a new, meticulously documented secret that time has tried to erase.

The 37 nuns were chained together in pairs and forced to march for 12 days to the port of Thessaloniki. During this journey, they were forbidden to speak or pray aloud. Nevertheless, according to several accounts from villagers, collected decades later by Greek chroniclers, the constant murmur of their chanted prayers could be heard in the night. In Thessaloniki, they were put on an Ottoman ship bound for Constantinople. The sea voyage lasted another 12 days in appalling conditions. Crammed into the ship’s hold, chained to the floor, they received only one meal a day and stagnant water. Yet, even in these conditions, their faith did not waver. A fascinating detail comes to us from a Venetian merchant, Giovanni Bembo, who was traveling on the same ship. In a letter to his brother dated September 3, 1438, he described how these women, despite their wretched condition, continually carved small crosses into the wooden boards with their fingernails. “They are carving their faith into the very wood that imprisoned them,” he wrote, with troubled admiration. Before revealing what happened upon their arrival in Constantinople, take a moment. If these Forgotten Stories fascinate you, subscribe to Forgotten Stories. Each week, we bring you a new, meticulously researched revelation from the archives of history. Together, we explore the secrets that time has sought to erase.

On September 15, 1438, the nuns finally arrived in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Constantinople, the city that had been the heart of Eastern Christianity for 1,000 years before its conquest by Mehmed II in 1453, was already under Ottoman rule in certain districts. The nuns were taken directly to the imperial palace where they were to appear before the imperial council. The scene that unfolded in the Divan, the Ottoman council chamber, was recounted by several sources, notably by the Ottoman chronicler Ashik Pasha-Zade. The 37 women, exhausted and in tattered clothes, stood before Grand Vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha. Through a Greek interpreter, they were presented with a simple choice: publicly renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam or disappear into the palace dungeons. The response was unanimous and silent. Not one of them uttered a word. This silence, this refusal to even acknowledge the existence of the choice presented to them, constituted in itself an extraordinary act of rebellion. In a culture where imperial power demanded submission and recognition, this absolute muteness was more provocative than any word of defiance. The Grand Vizier, furious at this passive resistance, ordered their immediate imprisonment in the palace dungeons. However, a crucial detail is revealed to us by the palace records.

Unlike ordinary prisoners, these nuns were not registered in the official captives’ books. From that moment on, they became bureaucratic ghosts, people who officially did not exist. This strategy of erasure was deliberate and methodical. The Ottoman Empire, in its complex management of multi-ethnic and multi-religious populations, used documentation as a tool of power. By not registering these women, they were literally removed from official history. They could be tortured, forcibly converted, or even killed without any administrative trace remaining. The nuns spent the first six months in the damp dungeons beneath the palace. The conditions were appalling: no natural light, insufficient food, and above all, the absolute prohibition of any religious object or symbol. Everything that could remind them of their faith—crosses, rosaries, prayer books—had been confiscated. Yet, even under these conditions, their spiritual resistance continued. Fragments of testimonies, collected much later from palace servants who had survived to an advanced age, reveal extraordinary details. The nuns used pebbles to count their prayers instead of rosaries. They traced invisible crosses in the air with their fingers. They transformed the most mundane daily rituals into acts of secret devotion.

In the spring of 1439, their status changed abruptly. It was decided that they would serve as domestic servants in the kitchens and the servants’ quarters of the palace. This decision was not an act of mercy. It was a more insidious attempt to break their solidarity by dispersing them and forcing them to participate in the daily life of the Ottoman Palace. Yet, it was precisely this dispersal that gave them the opportunity to create something extraordinary. Working in different parts of the palace, some of the nuns discovered forgotten passages, abandoned corridors, and cellars sealed for decades. And it was in one of these hidden spaces that they would carry out their most audacious act of resistance. In a cellar located beneath the eastern wing of the palace, accessible only through a narrow passage behind the kitchens, the nuns created a secret sanctuary. This space, no larger than a small room, became their clandestine chapel. Without tools, without materials, only with their bare hands and pieces of stone found in the rubble, they carved Christian symbols into the walls.

The details of this secret chapel are known to us thanks to an astonishing archaeological discovery made in 1923 during restoration work at Topkapi Palace. Workers, while demolishing a wall for renovations, stumbled upon this hidden space. What they discovered stunned even the most seasoned historians. On the damp stone walls, engraved with infinite patience, were dozens of crosses of varying sizes. Fragments of prayers in ancient Greek had been painstakingly carved letter by letter. Orthodox Christian symbols—fish, dove, lamb—adorned every available surface. In the center of the room, a block of stone had been roughly hewn to form a rudimentary altar. But the most shocking detail was the discovery of seven cavities carved into the back wall. In each one, carefully placed, was a fragment of bone or fabric. Further analysis revealed that these were likely personal relics: pieces of their own clothing, perhaps even fragments of their own finger bones, thus creating their own holy relic in the absence of external sacred objects. This discovery raises a troubling question. What do you think of such an act of faith? Imagine the determination required to carve these symbols into stone for years, in complete secrecy. Do you believe there are other hidden chapels like this one waiting to be discovered in the foundations of ancient palaces? Share your thoughts in the comments. Your theories will inform our future research.

The existence of this secret chapel raises a troubling question. How long could the nuns have kept this sanctuary hidden? Archaeological evidence suggests the space was used for at least three years, perhaps longer. The depth and complexity of the carvings indicate a long and arduous process, likely carried out during brief periods stolen from their duties as servants. However, all resistance comes to an end. Between 1442 and 1445, even indirect mentions of these nuns gradually disappear from all historical sources. The last traces—scattered fragments in merchants’ letters, marginal notes in Greek monastic chronicles—cease abruptly.

What happened to them? Theories abound among modern historians. Some suggest they were ultimately executed in secret, their bodies thrown into the Bosphorus without ceremony or marking. Others believe they gradually died of disease, malnutrition, and exhaustion. A more disturbing hypothesis, put forward by the Turkish historian Ayşe Hür, proposes they were dispersed to different parts of the empire, sold into slavery, or given as servants to Ottoman officials. Their collective identity was dissolved into anonymity. What is certain is that their erasure from official records was deliberate. No Ottoman register mentions them, their imprisonment, or their deaths. No imperial document refers to the location of the Holy Trinity Convent. It is as if the Ottoman Empire decided these women had never existed.

Yet their story survived. In the Greek Orthodox monasteries of the region, fragments of their stories were preserved in oral tradition. Monks secretly copied accounts of their resistance in the margins of religious manuscripts. Families of Thessalian villagers passed down from generation to generation the hymns they had heard during the nuns’ forced march. The discovery of their secret chapel in 1923 was a revolutionary moment for understanding this period. For the first time, there was tangible physical evidence of their existence and their resistance. The symbols they had carved in stone testified to their absolute refusal to abandon their faith, even in the face of complete annihilation. Analysis of the carvings revealed something even deeper. The crosses were not simply drawn randomly. They followed a precise liturgical pattern corresponding to the prayers of the Orthodox Rosary. Each symbol, each engraved letter was part of an elaborate mnemonic system allowing the nuns to read their prayers on the walls, transforming the stone itself into a forbidden prayer book.

This discovery raises a profound philosophical question. Can a person truly be erased from history? The Ottoman Empire possessed the military, administrative, and cultural power to suppress all documentary traces of these 37 women. Nevertheless, their faith, etched in stone; their prayers, whispered and passed down through generations; their stories, preserved in the margins of manuscripts—all of this survived official erasure. Today, the secret chapel beneath Topkapi Palace no longer exists. Successive renovations of the building during the 20th century destroyed it. Only photographs taken in 1923 and 1924 remain, preserved in the Turkish National Archives. But these blurry, black-and-white images bear silent witness to extraordinary resistance. The story of the Thessalian nuns teaches us something fundamental about the nature of historical memory and power. Empires can conquer territories, destroy monuments, and burn archives. They can erase names from official records and forbid the mention of inconvenient events. But they cannot erase faith, memory, or the human spirit that refuses to submit. And how many other stories like this one are still waiting to be revealed? In the coming weeks, we will continue to explore these forbidden narratives, these truths hidden in the forgotten corners of history. If this quest fascinates you as much as it fascinates me, stay with us.

These 37 women, whose names we don’t even all know, transformed their captivity into an act of spiritual creation. Deprived of everything—freedom, dignity, recognition of their very existence—they nevertheless found a way to etch their faith into the hard stone of the palace that imprisoned them. Their secret chapel was not simply a clandestine place of worship. It was a declaration, etched in time, that their spirit could not be broken. When we speak of historical heroism, we often think of warriors, political leaders, revolutionaries who changed the course of nations by force. But there is another form of heroism, quieter, but no less powerful: that of those who simply refuse to renounce who they are, even in the face of annihilation.

The nuns of Thessaly belong to that rare category of historical heroes whose victory was entirely spiritual. They did not defeat their oppressors on the battlefield. They did not overthrow the Ottoman Empire or liberate their compatriots. Their triumph was of a different kind. They proved that the human spirit possesses an inner fortress that even the most powerful empire cannot conquer. Their voices, silenced by official history for five centuries, now resonate through time. Every cross they carved, every prayer they whispered, every symbol they created in the shadows—all of this stands as an enduring testament to the power of faith and peaceful resistance.

Today, when you visit Istanbul, when you walk the ancient streets where these women were dragged in chains, when you gaze at the walls of Topkapi Palace, remember that there are stories buried beneath every stone, stories of those who refused to be erased, even when all the power in the world conspired to make them disappear. The story of the nuns of Thessaly reminds us that true victory is not always measured in conquered territories or won battles. Sometimes, it is measured in crosses carved on hidden walls, in prayers whispered in the darkness, in faith preserved against all odds. And that victory, no empire can defeat.