Directly after celebrating the solemn Easter Liturgy on 10 April 1821, Gregory V was accosted by the Ottomans and, still in full liturgical vestments, was taken out of the Patriarchal Cathedral.

He was then lynched, his corpse being left for two days on the main gate of the Patriarchate compound, all by order of the Sultan.

[2] According to several accounts, after Gregory V's death, his body, along with those of other executed prelates, was turned over to the city's Jews, who dragged it through the streets and threw it into the sea.

[3][4] This led to several bloody reprisal attacks in southern Greece by the Greek rebels, who regarded the Jews as collaborators of the Turks.

This in turn led to the Jews joining the Turks in confrontations with Christians in some locations in northern Greece, which fueled a new wave of anti-Jewish attacks in the south.

Dionysios Solomos, in his "Hymn to Liberty", which later became the Greek national anthem, also mentions the hanging of the patriarch in some stanzas.