Holy Martyrs Iouventinos and Maximinos of Antioch

Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos of Antioch

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church is the feast-day of two martyred soldiers of Julian the Apostate, the Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos, who were stripped of their ranks and executed in the year 363. They are honoured and commemorated in both the West and the East, though for us their feast-day falls on the fifth of September, and for our Latin brethren their feast falls on the twenty-fifth of January.

Iouventinos [L. Juventinus, Gk. Ιουβεντίνος] and Maximinos [L. Maximus, Gk. Μαξιμίνος] were among the armour-bearers (the technical term is hypaspistai ὑπασπισταὶ) of Julian’s entourage. In classical times, armour-bearers were among the most élite rank of trusted troops in the Greek, and later Roman, army. We may thus assume that Iouventinos and Maximinos were both highly skilled in combat, renowned for bravery and politically astute enough to ascend the ranks. They were present with Julian’s army when the emperor was planning to launch his reckless, wicked war of aggression against Sâsânian Persia, which he was staging from the city of Antioch, the native town of both men.

Julian’s overall presence in Antioch was broadly resented for several reasons. His desire to restore the temple of Apollo at Daphnē was one major sticking point. His impious treatment of the relics of Saint Babylas whom we commemorated yesterday, in seeking to restore the Temple of Apollo, led to a mass demonstration among the Christians of the city. Later, when the Temple of Apollo caught fire, Julian blamed the Christians and closed the Cathedral in Antioch while he began an investigation which turned up no evidence of foul play. In addition, Julian led an austere, puritanical lifestyle which clashed somewhat with the more hedonic habits of the Antiochians, and which they were (rightly) wont to view as hypocritical. In his Ecclesiastical History the Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos refers to Julian’s ‘mask of moderation’.

As mentioned above, Julian’s plan to embark on a needless, hubristic military campaign against the Persians – who were traditionally the enemies of Rome, but who at that time posed no threat to Rome’s borders and indeed sought more peaceful relations – was popular among some of the senior officers of the army, but it also served to alienate him from the Antiochians. We must remember, after all, that Antioch’s gæographical position rendered her vulnerable to Persian attack, and the Antiochians keenly remembered the repeated sieges of Šâh Šâpur II against their city. The notables of Antioch were eager to give peace a chance, which was not high on Julian’s list of priorities.

But Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos actually became embroiled in Julian’s ‘food politics’ in Antioch. There was some long-standing dispute between Julian and the Antiochian notables over food prices and supply, with Julian accusing them of hoarding at the expense of the citizens. It is unclear whether or not Julian was justified in this accusation, but he certainly didn’t help matters when he personally decided to offer extravagant, bloody sacrifices of flesh meats to the pagan gods in public festival. He scattered the blood throughout the main marketplace, befouling the bread and meat and fruit and vegetables which were being sold there. And two of the people who were overheard, at a military banquet, to object strongly to this vulgar display of waste and despoiling of the city’s food supply were his own Antiochian armour-bearers, Iouventinos and Maximinos.

One of their fellow-officers, who was present at the banquet, reported them to Julian, who had them seized and brought before him. Evidently he expected Iouventinos and Maximinos to recant and to show the requisite loyalty to him and to the idols he worshipped. But the effect upon the two of them was much the reverse. Having been brought before Julian, they took the opportunity to upbraid him to his face, both for his wasteful extravagance in defiling the food with sacrificial blood, and for his apostasy from the Church. Incensed, the apostate emperor had the two of them stripped of their rank, tortured and beheaded. Thus, the two armour-bearers exchanged worldly rank and status for an everlasting heavenly glory in their martyrdom, and put to shame the pagan impiety of the apostate emperor.

Julian had the word put out that the two soldiers had been executed for mutiny, in order to prevent them from being venerated as martyrs. But the citizens of Antioch, when they heard of what had happened to Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos, at risk of their lives went and claimed their remains. They interred the two armour-bearers in a magnificent tomb, which soon became a site of veneration for the Christians of Antioch. Blessed Theodoret was not the only Antiochian hierarch to pay reverence in writing to these two martyrs – Saint John Chrysostom also wrote a homily in their honour. Holy saints Iouventinos and Maximinos, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Holy Hieromartyr Babylas, Archbishop of Antioch, and those with him

Saint Babylas of Antioch, along with Saints Ourbanos, Prilidianos and Apollonios

Today is the fourth of September, which is the feast day of the holy anti-Nazi martyr Bishop Saint Gorazd of Prague, who sheltered the Czech insurgents who carried out Operation Anthropoid in 1942. It is also, coincidentally, my daughter Eleanore’s birthday, who was born 70 years, to the day, after Saint Gorazd’s martyrdom. It is also the feast day of Saint Babylas, the twelfth (or thirteenth, if you count Saint Peter) Archbishop of Antioch, and a particular favourite of Saint John Chrysostom, who gave a touching homily in his memory. Saint Babylas was, like his Czech fellow hieromartyr with whom he shares a feast, a speaker of truth to power. He is commemorated alongside the young brothers Ourbanos, Prilidianos and Apollonios, and their mother Saint Christodoula, who were martyred alongside their bishop.

Saint Babylas [Gk. Βαβύλας, Ar. Bâbîlâ بابيلا] was born probably in the late second century, and was a native of Antioch. We may assume that he became a monk at some point. We also know that he succeeded Zebinas (Ozniophios) as the Archbishop of Antioch in the year 237. He continued as the Archbishop of Antioch through the reign of the Emperor Trajan Decius, who ruled from 249 to 251 – though the name of the emperor who executed Saint Babylas is not named by Chrysostom. Decius visited Antioch toward the end of his reign and held a huge festival in honour of the pagan gods. At that time, Saint Babylas held the Divine Liturgy in the great Church in Antioch, during the homily giving comfort and strength to his flock and admonishing them to stay steadfast through all trials. It so happened that the Emperor sought admission to the Church, for he was curious about the rites of the Christians – or so he claimed. However, when the Archbishop heard this, he went out of the church and blocked the path of the Emperor, refusing the Emperor admittance on account of his impiety, which he would not sanction within the house of God.

To save face – and because the Christians would have started a riot had he proceeded – Trajan Decius had no choice but to withdraw. But his heart was poisoned against Saint Babylas, and he sought revenge against the Archbishop for the slight to his imperial dignity. On the following day the troops of Decius set fire to the church, seized the Archbishop, and led him before the emperor. The emperor demanded to know the reason for Saint Babylas’s act of lèse-majesté, and the saint offered this reply: ‘Anyone who would rise up against God and want to desecrate His sanctuary, is not worthy of respect, but has become the enemy of the Lord.’

Trajan Decius then ordered Babylas to bow before the idols and make offerings to them, to expunge his crime against the Emperor, but no matter how he was cajoled or threatened he would do no such thing. Then the angry emperor ordered Saint Babylas to be bound in heavy chains and led through the streets in public disgrace. To this the saint replied: ‘Emperor, for me these chains be as venerable, as for thee is thine imperial crown; and the suffering for Christ for me is as acceptable, as is the imperial power for thee; death for the Immortal King for me is as desirable, as thine life be for thee.’

Together with Saint Babylas, three children were brought before the Emperor – these were the aforementioned Ourbanos, Prilidianos and Apollonios. The three of them refused to abandon their archbishop, and stood together with him. When the Emperor demanded to know who they were, the saint replied that they were his spiritual children, and that they had attained to a high degree of spiritual and moral perfection. With that, the Emperor turned his blandishments and threats upon the children and upon their mother Christodoula, and when none of them would submit to worship the idols, he ordered them to be whipped heavily according to their ages: the eldest received twelve blows; the second, ten; and the youngest, seven. The executioner then led the children and their mother away, and later the Emperor told Saint Babylas that they had renounced Christ – however, Saint Babylas was given to know that what the Emperor told him was a lie.

The children, their mother, and Archbishop Babylas were then all sentenced to be tied to a tree-trunk, their flesh burned, and finally beheaded, and thus they all received the crown of martyrdom for Christ Jesus.

Saint Babylas, Saint Christodoula and the three youths martyred with them very quickly became the objects of fervent and heartfelt veneration among the Christians of Antioch, who offered prayers over their dear relics at the site of their burial. In the 350s, however, the relics were translated from their original resting-place into a shrine in the district of Daphnē, which for the pagans was sacred to Apollo. It was also renowned as something of a ‘red-light district’ in Classical Antioch, and its cypress grove was the site of trysts and prostitution both sæcular and otherwise. The relics of Babylas and those martyred with him were moved there in part to counteract the reputation of this district – as Chrysostom would say, ‘a physician to the sick’.

Chrysostom recounts that Julian the Apostate, when he visited Antioch, sought advice from the Oracle of Apollo in Daphnē, but the oracle gave no answer – and this was determined to be on account of the propinquity of the saint’s relics. As a result, Julian had the martyrs’ relics exhumed and moved back to their original resting-place. A few days later, however, on the twenty-second of October, the roof of the Temple of Apollo in Daphnē caught fire, destroying the statue of the god within. Julian, suspecting that Christians had been behind an act of arson, closed the Cathedral at Antioch while he ordered an investigation that turned up very little of use – though some spurious charges were laid at the feet of a lax worshipper who was careless with a candle. Saint John Chrysostom claims that the fire was caused by a bolt of lightning from heaven.

Saint John Chrysostom also alludes in his homily that a new church for Saint Babylas was constructed, the Kaoussie Church, on the order of his successor Saint Meletios, who took part in the construction with the work of his own hands. This church was built on the banks of the Nahr al-‘Âṣî (that is, the Orontes) specifically to house the relics of the saint. However, in the Middle Ages, the relics of Saint Babylas were said to have been removed from Antioch and installed in Cremona, Italy. Holy Saint Babylas, speaker of Christ’s Truth even before emperors, pray unto Christ our God for our salvation!

Apolytikion for Saint Babylas, Tone 4:

By sharing in the ways of the Apostles,
You became a successor to their throne.
Through the practice of virtue,
You found the way to divine contemplation, O inspired one of God;
By teaching the word of truth without error,
You defended the Faith, even to the shedding of your blood.
Hieromartyr Babylas, entreat Christ God to save our souls.

Kaoussie Church (or Martyrion of Saint Babylas), Antioch

The spellbreaking power of the Elbe

Eastern Europe truly is a very different place from Western Europe, in part because many of the illusions and lies that our elites have concocted for us about political realities simply shatter and vanish upon contact with Eastern Europe. And by ‘Eastern Europe’ I do count those areas of what is more properly called Central Europe, which begins in the Elbe River basin and includes what used to be East Germany.

Take Russiagate, for example. Russiagate was always a lie – and a flimsy lie at that, but no less dangerous for being flimsy. The American journo class, and especially MSNBC, tried incredibly hard to paint Trump as an agent of Russia, someone who served primarily Russian interests, who was elected essentially at Russia’s behest. The lie was repeated so baldly and so repeatedly that the Putin-Trump ‘bromance’ and the Russian ‘love affair’ with Trump became articles of faith. The only problem is that none of it is actually true, and the Russiagate story is used to play centrist Americans for suckers. Neither Putin, nor the Russians who elected him and continue to support him, ever had much use for Trump, save for the fact that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, the Pew poll that came out at the beginning of this year regarding attitudes toward Trump and America worldwide still support this view. Russians really don’t like Trump, who has a confidence rating of 20%. For comparison, Trump polls as well or better in Canada (28%) and every single Western European country surveyed – the UK (32%), the Netherlands (25%), France (20%), Spain (21%), Italy (32%) – except Germany (13%). On the other hand, despite the growing impatience with him, Russians do still love Putin, and the same Pew data gave him a rating of 73%.

But what do I mean when I say the Elbe dispels political illusions? I mean precisely this: the lie of Russiagate becomes ever more untenable the closer you actually approach Russia. Where the Russiagate story about election collusion and Trump being a Russian agent has purchase, one would expect to see equally or near-equally low approval ratings for both Trump and Russia. And indeed, in Western Europe this is generally the case, with Russia receiving approval ratings about on par with Trump there, according to Pew data collected in February this year. This is not necessarily a good indication that they ‘buy’ the Russiagate story, however. It may simply be the case that Western Europeans see both Trump and Russia as threats to their interests.

But the Elbe breaks this spell, hard, in two different ways. First of all, one sees the expected low approval ratings for Russia in Poland (33%) and the Ukraine (32%). However, both countries show markedly higher approval for Trump. Poland, in fact, is the only country in Europe where a slim majority (51%) have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, whereas in the Ukraine a plurality (44%) believes the same. Intriguing, no, that significant portions of the populations in Poland and in the Ukraine approve of Trump but do not approve of Russia? If Trump were Russia’s agent, wouldn’t one expect to see those numbers closely coincide, as they do in Western Europe?

On the other side, we have countries where Russia polls highly, but Trump does not. Bulgaria has a remarkably high degree of trust in Russia (73%), but Trump is even more unpopular there (26%) than in Canada or Italy. Likewise Slovakia – a solid majority of the country trusts Russia (60%), which is far more than can be said for Trump (34%). And finally Greece, where Russia generally (58%) and Putin personally (52%) sway a majority of the population’s trust, but where Trump (25%) is as thoroughly distrusted as in Western Europe. Even in East Germany, this same pattern seems to hold: 43% of East Germans have a favourable opinion of Russia – markedly more than in West Germany (33%). But East Germans also seem to loathe Trump every bit as much as their West German neighbours do, with an approval rating in the high teens. It’s very much the case that the closer one gets in proximity to Russia, the more ludicrous the idea that the Russian state or, even more so, the Russian people are invested in Trump seems to be. And that seems to hold regardless of what opinion one has of Russia.

One of the notable analyses that accompanied the Pew study was the degree to which European support for Trump was predicated on domestic political objectives and orientation. The new nationalist right parties tend to have far warmer feelings for Trump on average than their countrymen – even when those new nationalist right parties are also Russophobic, as in Poland and Hungary. On the other hand, warm feelings for Russia simply do not seem to be driven as much by ideological considerations, at least in Eastern Europe. As I have said before, pro-Russia parties in Eastern Europe tend to fall as much on the political left or even in the centre as on the right.

And to a certain extent, I believe ideology does matter. A historical connexion with Orthodox Christianity does seem to correlate to a certain hostility to capitalism of the sort that Trump represents, although that anti-capitalism cannot be said to be causally linked to the corpus of Orthodox doctrine or Liturgical practice (which is a shame!). These Orthodox countries do, after all, seem to have done a better job on the whole of keeping their social services and transfer mechanisms intact despite the onslaught of neoliberalism against them. The fact that the countries which are traditionally within the Orthosphere seem to be particularly cool toward Trump and warm toward Russia does seem to indicate a certain ideological distaste for what Trump represents, over-against that which Russia represents. These are taken, with good reason, to be two different things.

But what does seem to matter in these countries, is not ideology, but culture, which in some ways underlies politics more deeply than ideology does. Bulgaria has a deep and abiding connexion to its Orthodox roots, going back to the Seven Saints. Bulgarian literature has a strong Russophile streak – for example, Ivan Vazov’s famous novel! And of course there is the long history of peasant rebellion which this literature implies, which is echoed in the interwar distributist governance of Aleksandar Stamboliyski. In particularly the eastern part of Czechoslovakia, too – and Carpathian Ruthenia in particular – there was a strong streak of both peasant rebellion and cultural attachment to Russia, which has carried its echoes into modern-day Slovak politics.

It’s actually a bit sad, because the data I’m drawing on here really are hidden in plain sight. It’s just that convenience and force of habit weigh more heavily with the average consumer of news media than truth does, and therefore this intellectually-lazy and baseless association of Trump with Russia continues unabated, to be used – as it inevitably will be – as a blunt instrument and as an accusation of disloyalty against the opposite ‘side’ in American electoral politics. What a truly sorry time we live in, where even the people who claim to be on the side of ‘facts’ and ‘reason’ are simply blind to both. What few hopes I have left for sanity in the West, are actually in the East of the West… in the Elbe Basin and beyond.

Venerable Symeōn Stylitēs the Elder of Antioch

Saint Symeōn the Elder Stylite

The beginning of the new ecclesiastical year in the Orthodox Church, the first of September, is also the feast-day of Saint Symeōn the Elder Stylite of Antioch. Saint Symeōn is perhaps one of the best exemplars of the tendency within the fathers of the Syrian desert toward idiosyncratic and unique forms of asceticism, combined with absolute mortification of the individual will. As such, it is quite common for us moderns – myself included in that, honestly – often not to know what to make of him.

Saint Symeōn [Gk. Συμεών ὁ Στυλίτης, Ar. Sim‘ân al-‘Amûdî سمعان العمودي] was born around the year 386 in a village called Sis, which is in the Jabal al-Lukkam in the region of Kilikia (modern-day İslâhiye near the Turkish-Syrian border). His parents were Syriac-speaking Christians – his father may have had the Greek name of Syphōkiōn or Sisōtiōn, and his mother may have been named Martha, though this appears to be a confusion with St Martha the mother of the younger Symeōn Stylitēs – and they had him baptised ‘when he was small’. He, along with his brother Shemsi, were the only two of their parents’ many children who lived to adulthood. Saint Symeōn worked tending his father’s animals, and spent long days labouring in the pastures. Symeōn was not literate – even as a young adult his hagiography indicates he had little knowledge of the Scriptures. These three facts taken together indicate that his parents were not well-off, and may be counted as among the rural fallahîn of their day.

Early on, young Symeōn showed certain dispositions for the life of seclusion and holiness. He worked tirelessly for his father. As a result, although he was small and scrawny in stature, still he was nimble on his feet, deft with his hands, and capable in the strength of his body. As he worked in the pastures he collected resin from the sweetgum trees, and burned it as incense, even though he did not yet understand the importance of this. Even though he had no direct knowledge of the Scriptures, still he was cheerful in disposition, gentle in demeanour and loving in his actions to all. He made sure that his brother and his fellow-workers, those whom he met, ate their fill before eating himself – if he ate at all.

When he was thirteen years old and tending his father’s flocks he entered a Church, roughly 60 kilometres away from what is now Aleppo, where he heard the Epistles of St Paul being read. He asked the elder in the Church what the meaning was of the passage that he had read, and what it meant to fear God. The elder, who was a bit sceptical of this rustic child asking him such serious questions, asked him why he wanted to know. Symeōn humbly replied that it was because he was ignorant and unlearned that he wished to know about God. The elder replied to him that if he kept the fasts, prayed continuously, humbled himself before his neighbours, loved his father and mother, and obeyed God’s commandments through His priests, then he would inherit the Kingdom. The elder then told him that these things could best be done in a monastery. Symeōn then fell on his face before the elder and resolved to follow the ways of God.

When he was eighteen, Saint Symeōn presented himself to the abbot of the same elder, whose name was Timothy, and begged to be admitted into the fellowship. After ascertaining that the youth was not a criminal or fleeing a debt, Abba Timothy allowed Symeōn to join the monastery and handed him to the brothers to teach him the rules. The first four months he spent there without complaint or trouble, diligently learning the Psalter. Whatever he was given, whether food or money, he gave it to the poor, eating for himself only once every week. He also imposed in secret an ascetic extremity upon himself of binding his flesh with a coarse, heavy rope from the monastery well.

The other monks began to complain about him, that he was following his own rule rather than the rule of the abbot. This was a very serious charge, as it showed to them that Saint Symeōn had not mastered the cœnobitic discipline of obedience but rather followed his own will. Upon discovering that he had bound his flesh with the rope, the abbot became angry and told Symeōn to leave the monastery – but not before the brothers had tended to his festering wounds from the rope and nursed him back to strength. Symeōn went in solitude to an old dry well where many unclean spirits dwelt, and these spirits went and assailed the abbot with loud voices, clamouring for him to give them Symeōn. By this Abba Timothy understood that Symeōn was in fact a holy youth, driven not by pride or by vainglory but instead by a sincere humility. Abba Timothy begged Symeōn to return, and even sent five brothers to bring him back by force. At the monastery Abba Timothy and all the brothers prostrated themselves at Saint Symeōn’s feet and begged his forgiveness for their sin against him, but Symeōn heaved a great sigh, fell on his face in reply, and asked the monks not to add to his burden as an unhappy sinner – and further agreed to accept Abba Timothy’s rule as a father and as a servant of God. He stayed in that monastery a year longer.

When Saint Symeōn left again, he removed himself to a small cell of dry stone walls nearby the monastery, by the village of Galanissa, and stayed there for three years. Many folk went and sought him there to ask his guidance and prayers. Then he beheld a vision of a man in a splendid raiment, who told him to take the stones of that place and build himself a pillar, on which he would stand in constant prayer, exposed to the elements. He built his little pillar four cubits – about two metres – high, and lived on top of it for four years. His reputation for wisdom and holiness continued to spread, and throngs of people came to him. Desiring further solitude, Saint Symeōn built his column again and it became 12 cubits (6 m) high, and he lived upon it for twelve years. The same crowd again came to him and disturbed his peace, and he built his column again 20 cubits (9 m) high, and he lived upon it for another twelve years. Then the people built two cathedrals near him, and another column which was 30 cubits (14 m) high. He lived upon this column for four years.

During this time he worked numerous wonders. Those who came to him possessed by devils were exorcised. Those who came to him with diseases and infirmities, even leprosy, were healed of them. Those who came blind were restored their sight, and those who came to him deaf were restored their hearing. By means of his holy life and deeds of mercy, Saint Symeōn converted many to the Christian faith. Among these, Saracens, Persians, Armaceni, Laoti and other ‘strangers’ (allophyli) are mentioned in his Life. Another account mentions Persians, Medes, Saracens, Ethiopians, Iberians [i.e. Georgians] and Scythians among those who held the Stylite in veneration.

The Life of Saint Symeōn recounts one of his temptations by the Evil One, who disguised himself as an angel of light and appeared to the saint in a fiery chariot, beckoning him to be taken bodily into heaven. Saint Symeōn lifted his right foot to ascend the chariot, and then lifted his right hand to make the sign of the Cross. As soon as he had made the Cross, the angel and chariot vanished like vapour, and thus Symeōn knew this apparition to be of the Devil. In shame, Saint Symeōn spoke to his foot: ‘Don’t come back down, but stay like that until my death, until the Lord summons me, a sinner!’

His thigh had been wounded by the Devil, and this wound soon festered and became infested with maggots. The assistant of the stylite, a youth named Antûn, witnessed this. Symeōn asked Antûn to bring him back up the pillar those maggots which had fallen off him, and doing so the saint put them back on his leg, bidding them eat what the Lord had given them. When a certain Saracen king (basilikos) went to visit him, a maggot fell from the pillar and the king ran and caught it in his hands. Saint Symeōn asked why he did that, for such a thing made him feel ashamed. But the king told the saint that it was in fact no maggot, but instead a precious pearl – and so it was. Saint Symeōn told the king that it was given to him as such for his faith, and the king took it and withdrew.

At one time the saint’s mother came to visit him, but in general women were not allowed to enter the place where his pillar was. When he heard her voice, Symeōn called out to her: ‘Wait just a little while and we shall see each other again, God willing.’

His mother began to weep and loose her hair, and asked him: ‘My son, why do you do this? As thanks for bearing you I am filled with grief. For the milk I have fed you you have given me tears. For the kisses I showered you with, you gave me back pains of the heart. And for the labour with which I raised you you gave me the most painful wounds.’

This saying caused Saint Symeōn, and all who were with him, to weep. He bade her: ‘Dear mother, be at peace a little while, and we shall see each other in the place of eternal rest!’

His mother continued to entreat him to let her look upon him, not as a stranger in the kingdom of heaven but as her own flesh and blood in this life – or at least, that she might die swiftly so that she might the sooner see him, and his father who had already gone before. Three days and nights she spent at the foot of his column, and on the fourth she gave up the spirit, and the monks picked up her body and brought it up to Saint Symeōn. Saint Symeōn wept over his mother’s body and prayed to God that she might enter into the company of His saints. After this, the people built a pillar for Saint Symeōn, 40 cubits (18 m) high, upon which he lived for sixteen years, until he died.

Saint Symeōn wrought many more wonders upon his new pillar. One of these is an intriguing, peaceable variation on the hagiographic tales of ascetics who slay dragons. In Saint Symeōn’s Life, there was a dragon that lived near him in the region of Aquilo, which had taken a splinter of wood in its eye and lived in great agony and blindness. The dragon slithered its way to Saint Symeōn’s pillar, twisted itself into coils in humility, and then prostrated itself before the saint of God. Saint Symeōn prayed over the serpent, and pulled the sliver out of its eye. It measured a cubit in length. Although the crowds kept their distance out of fear of the dragon, they praised God when they saw that Symeōn had healed it. The dragon lay there prone for a long while as the people walked past, and then it gathered itself up, bowed its head in the direction of the monastery, and went in peace back to its den. No one came to any harm. This episode is intriguing in that the saint healed rather than slew the serpent.

There are numerous other miracles in Saint Symeōn’s Life, which says of these that they are too many to count. He cured a certain woman of an intestinal worm three cubits long, when no doctor could dislodge the parasite. He caused a bountiful holy spring to appear in a cleft in the earth on the eastern side of Abba Timothy’s monastery, during a season of dire drought. His prayers, uttered over earth from the monastery, felled a man-eating leopard that was terrorising the countryside and killing fallahîn and their animals. Two petitioners who came to Saint Symeōn’s pillar after having killed a pregnant doe were stricken dumb on account of their crime; the doe was laid with reverence within the monastery walls.

There is another tale of an Antiochian brigand named Ionathas, who committed many evil crimes. When the authorities caught up with him, he ran to earth and sought sanctuary at the base of Saint Symeōn’s pillar. He confessed his many crimes and wicked deeds to the holy man, and he spoke of his desire to repent. Saint Symeōn enjoined him sternly not to try him, or to return to his life of crime. When the authorities came to the monastery seeking Ionathas, they bade the saint give the brigand up to them. They also recounted to Symeōn his many crimes, told him that he had already been tried, found guilty and sentenced to be fed to wild beasts, and said that there would be a riot in Antioch if he were not brought to justice.

Symeōn answered them thus: ‘He who led him here is greater than I. He protects people like this, for such is the kingdom of heaven. But if you feel you are able to enter here, come and seize him. I will not do so myself, for I fear the Lord God who sent him here.’

The authorities began to tremble. None of them moved to lay hold upon Ionathas. Instead they left the monastery for Antioch, where they told of what had happened. For a full week thereafter, Ionathas clung to the base of Saint Symeōn’s pillar. At the end of the seven days, he begged Symeōn’s permission to leave. The saint chided the bandit for being so eager to go back to his wicked life. But this was not what Ionathas meant. He gave up the ghost, then and there at the base of the pillar.

When word reached Antioch of the brigand’s death, again the authorities came to claim the body. But Saint Symeōn again answered them: ‘He who led him here came with a company of the heavenly host. He has the power to cast your whole city and everyone in it down to hell. He has welcomed this man’s soul to him, and I was fearful that He might also take me. So please cause no more trouble to me, the humble sinner.’ Upon hearing this, the Antiochian authorities again departed in great fear, and told of what had happened.

It was the custom of Saint Symeōn to make a full prostration upon his pillar every Friday. One Friday he did not arise, even the Sunday following. His assistant Antûn became afraid, and climbed up the pillar to find his master making no response to him. Only after a long while did Antûn stoop down to listen for Saint Symeōn’s breath, only to find there was no life within him – only the sweet odours of balsam and incense rose from his body. Antûn wept bitterly over his master’s body, kissed his eyes and made him decent, and then began to lament his departing. Saint Symeōn then appeared in a vision to Antûn, and told him that he would not abandon the pillar or the monastery or the people that he loved, but had gone to his rest in the Lord – and then exhorted Antûn to continue his labours diligently.

Antûn reported his master’s death to the Bishop of Antioch – at that time it would have been Martyrios – and to the Roman Army commander Ardaborios. They came with a great throng, brought down the saint’s body and laid it upon the altar. As they did so, birds flew overhead such that everyone could see and hear, singing songs of mourning. The outpourings of grief could be heard, Antûn tells us, for seven miles around, and even the mountains, fields, trees and sky wept.

As he lay in state upon the altar, Bishop Martyrios of Antioch tried to clip a portion of the saint’s beard to keep for a relic, but the hand that tried it was stricken with paralysis, and only after many prayers were spoken over him was he healed. Thereafter the Bishop forbade anyone – including himself – to touch the body, which was a source of grief to many in the region.

As the bier bearing Saint Symeōn passed Meroë, a man who had been deaf and dumb for forty years passed in front of the procession. This deaf-mute man had coveted another man’s wife when he was younger, and then broken into her tomb after she died, which was why he had been thus stricken. He fell to the ground before the saint, and began to speak, giving thanks to the saint for the gift of his speech and for forgiveness of his sin, and pledged to watch over and serve the saint as long as he lived.

Saint Symeōn was brought into Antioch, and the entire town turned out of their homes with gifts of gold and silver, singing psalms and hymns to bring him in procession into the church, before being returned to be buried near his pillar. This had been a matter of great dispute between Antioch and Constantinople, both of which claimed his relics for their own, but Antioch had the stronger claim to the saint as the pillar had been Saint Symeōn’s dwelling-place for so many years – though later Byzantine soldiers would exhume him and have him translated on dubious terms to Constantinople. Many wonders were wrought at his tomb, even more than he had done in life – and the deaf-mute who had been cured fulfilled his oath and served at the saint’s tomb until the day of his death.

Antûn, the faithful servant of the saint, had a new monastic church built around the saint’s relics at the base of the pillar. This is the Qal‘at Sim‘ân, or the ‘Fortress of Symeōn’. This church has been among the architectural victims of the bloody Syrian Civil War that has plagued the country since 2011. Occupation by the Kurdish YPG and the Sunnî fundamentalist Ahrâr aš-Šâm both took their toll on the building, though a Russian air strike hit the Qal‘at in May of 2016, badly damaging the site and knocking over what was left of Saint Symeōn’s pillar. The Turkish armed forces currently occupy the church, and have turned it into a military ‘observation post’. Holy Saint Symeōn, ascetic of the Syrian desert, elevated by the grace of God, pray unto God for us, and forgive us sinners!

Apolytikion to Saint Symeōn the Elder Stylite, Tone 1:

You were a pillar of patient endurance,
Having imitated the forefathers, O Venerable One:
Job in suffering, and Joseph in temptations.
You lived like the bodiless ones while yet in the flesh, O Symeōn, our Father.
Beseech Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Venerable Nikolai, Schemamonk of Optina

Optina Monastery

As I have mentioned before, historically speaking there has been a small but significant witness of the Orthodox faith among the Turkic-speaking peoples of Asia, among whom the Chuvash, Gagauz and Khakass peoples have already converted en masse to Orthodox Christianity. The vast majority of this witness has been borne among them by the Russian people. The saints Abraham of Bolgar (1227), Peter of the Golden Horde (1290), Pafnutii of Borovsk (1475), Paul and Stephen of Kazan (1553), Serapion of Kozheozersk (1611), Misail of Ryazan (1654), ’Ahmad the Calligrapher (1682), Platonida of Revda (ca. 1785) and Constantine of Smyrna (1819). To these we add the memory, today on the thirty-first of August, of the holy schemamonk of Optina, Saint Nikolai (Abrulakh).

We know the following about Saint Nikolai of Optina primarily from the Optina Paterikon, who is sometimes in other sources also erroneously called Saint Pavel the Turk. At the time of his death on the eighteenth of August (on the Old Calendar), 1893, he was sixty-five years of age – which would have put the date of his birth sometime in the year 1827 or 1828. (The Paterikon lists his birth in the year 1820.) He was born by the name Yusuf Abdul. He was born in the largely-Armenian village of Baghaghesh, to impoverished parents of noble lineage, who weaved cloth for a living. He was the eldest of three, having a younger brother and a younger sister.

When he was five years old he fell blind, and for three years no remedies were successful. His mother took him to an Armenian shrine which had just come into possession of some holy relics – in this way his blindness was cured. His father died in a famine, leaving the family without means of subsistence. Because of the cruelty of his wealthy Kurdish neighbours, Yusuf Abdul was dependent on the charity of the Armenians, to whom he went around begging as a child in the name of Christ. In this way he developed a kindness for the Christian faith even though he did not understand it, because the Armenians helped him when his fellow Muslims could not or – in the case of the Kurds – would not. He was apprenticed to an Armenian weaver, though the wealthy Kurds continued to treat him badly: beating him when he made a mistake or displeased them, for example. His Armenian master, however, took his mother and his siblings into his house and provided for them all through Yusuf’s apprenticeship. He also learned from an Armenian the barber’s trade, though his uncle disapproved of that line of work (as well as of the folk he was learning from).

When he came of age, he travelled to Trebizond and then to Istanbul where he made the acquaintance of the vizier, and then to Sivas, where he came to serve in the Ottoman Army. His regimental commander was pleased with him and he served there as an officer of the guard, attaining the rank of captain. He began to have dreams about the Divine Liturgy and about the Theotokos, and his sympathy for his Armenian compatriots in particular continued to grow. His unit was transferred from Sivas to Konya, and then to Erzurum, where he married the daughter of a senior officer – a great beauty and a politically-advantageous match. In 1853, during the Crimean War he was captured in an engagement outside Aleksandropol (modern Gyumri in Armenia), and as he observed the Russians who had captured him and how they treated their prisoners, he began to ask them questions about their faith. They recommended him to a certain monastic abbot, who sheltered him in his abbey in Tbilisi and where he was free to learn about the Christian faith. All during his captivity he attended Liturgies, primarily in Russian, and he determined to accept Christianity and to be baptised. However, this would not come to pass as yet. The Russian officer in charge of the prisoners would not allow Yusuf to be baptised, fearing that he was a spy and that his interest in Christianity was a ruse to gain intelligence for the Turks.

At the end of the Crimean War in 1856, Yusuf Abdul was returned to Turkey along with the other prisoners, and he was forced to leave behind the friends he had made in the Christian monasteries, which he bitterly regretted. He was pensioned in gold for his time spent as a prisoner, and then retired to Erzurum and lived for some time with his wife and daughter. His father-in-law began to suspect him of apostasy, though he made no move against him. He became very good friends with the Armenian families in Erzurum, and they discussed the Christian faith. Yusuf collected a large number of icons and prayer-books from them.

At length, though, his house was searched by the gendarmes. They found his icons and books, and placed him under arrest. They stripped him of his pension and beat him severely with two hundred blows of the cane. It turned out that his wife had betrayed him to his father-in-law, who had informed the authorities. He was transferred to a civilian prison, where he was sustained only by the kindness of Greek and Armenian residents who took pity on him and brought him food. As a gâvur, he was despised by both the other prisoners and by the prison guards, who beat him and tortured him whenever given the opportunity. He was transferred to Beirut and then to Cyprus, where he was forced to live as a beggar. He was mocked and abused while he lived there, though he managed to get enough food to survive.

At length he was allowed – or rather forced, by greedy and vicious gendarmes who found equal pleasure in extorting him, beating him, and forcing him to march barefoot before them – to return to Erzurum. His erstwhile wife and his father-in-law cruelly turned him away from their house, calling him a gâvur, refusing his request to let him see his sons, and telling him never to show himself at their door again. He went to the Greek and Armenian merchants of his hometown and asked them for funds to get to Russia, and they arranged for him to flee there, raising a thousand roubles for his travel expenses. The Turkish authorities got wind of this and planned to arrest him again, but he managed to flee into the Caucasus in a beggar’s disguise, with the money stitched into his clothes. He was met with suspicion on the Russian side – they believed him to be a Russian deserter from the Crimean War – and was forced back into Turkey where again he faced arrest.

Not being able to return home to Erzurum in the open, without being recognised, Yusuf Abdul instead turned southward, seeking to undergo a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Here again he was aided by the Greeks and Armenians, who saw fit to aid him with money and supplies for the journey. Yusuf Abdul joined the throng of pilgrims to the Holy Land, and took a route through Sivas, the city where he had begun serving the Ottoman state. He proceeded through Cæsarea and Adan, and in one Kurdish village he was attacked by dogs, and was saved from being mauled, or worse, only by reciting the Jesus Prayer. After he had said the Jesus Prayer, another dog leapt into the mêlée, and the four attacking him turned on that dog and savaged it instead of him. From Adan Yusuf Abdul made his way to Tarsos the birthplace of Saint Paul, and then to Mersin.

At Mersin he was able to board a Russian steamboat which was carrying pilgrims to the Holy Land, and which made port in Jaffa. Yusuf Abdul accompanied the Russian pilgrims to Jaffa and thereafter to Jerusalem. Again he was nearly turned away at the door – being still in his Turkish garb he was taken for a local guide for the pilgrims, and was not allowed inside the Christian dortoir. He explained that he had come seeking baptism, and after they had inquired about him, the Russian churchmen decided to allow Yusuf Abdul to stay with them. He soon fell ill there, however, and was treated by a Russian doctor. The doctor promised Yusuf that if he took a turn for the worse, he would call for a priest to baptise him and administer the unction to the sick.

After he recovered some forty days later, he began looking about in Jerusalem for someone to baptise him: the archimandrites of monasteries, the chaplain to the Russian Consulate, even the Patriarch of Jerusalem himself, Prokopios II. All of them, however, citing the severity of Ottoman law upon apostates from Islâm, refused to put his life in danger. Crestfallen, Yusuf Abdul returned to Constantinople, where again he attempted to seek baptism through the Russian Embassy. Here, at last, he was able to make headway toward his goal. Fr Makarii of the Russian Skete of St Panteleimon in Constantinople referred him to the Russian ambassador, Nikolai Pavlovich, Graf Ignat’ev (the same one who would negotiate the Treaty of San Stefano in 1877). Ignat’ev listened to Yusuf Abdul’s tale with sympathy, and ordered that he be given a Turkish passport with a Russian visa for entry, as well as some gold for expenses and a ticket on a steamboat to Odessa.

In October of 1874 Yusuf Abdul entered Russia a second time. He was set up in travellers’ quarters, given accommodations and food, and made the acquaintance of the mayor of Odessa, who offered to be his sponsor at baptism. This baptism, of which Yusuf Abdul had spent nearly two decades in deep desire and steadfast pursuit, occurred on the tenth of November, 1874, in the quarantine Church of Saint Nicholas in Odessa. Naturally enough, Yusuf Abdul took the Wonderworker as his patron saint, and was baptised with the name of Nikolai.

It behooves us readers of his hagiography to notice, at this point, the many obstacles and dangers that were presented to this Turkish man – who faced disownment by his family, imprisonment, torture, mutilation, forced marches, attacks by dogs, official harassment of all kinds, threats of death – in pursuit of baptism in the Orthodox faith. This is something we in the West too often take for granted. Our crosses are far lighter than his, a fact for which we should be thankful to God and to which we should be attentive as evidence of Saint Nikolai’s remarkable personal valour and trust in God. Here I look to score no political or sectarian points, as I speak as much for myself here as anyone else – having been baptised in a Russian consulate in China, where Orthodoxy is not legally recognised, but having still been subject to no official harassment either there or anywhere else. We moderns have a very easy time of it where religious freedom is concerned; what we do with that freedom, on the other hand, bears a great deal of scrutiny when placed next to the holy simplicity and deep faith of someone like Yusuf Abdul, who would become Saint Nikolai of Optina.

At any rate, having been baptised Orthodox, Yusuf Abdul – now known as Nikolai Abrulakh – conceived a desire to stay in Russia and to visit all the holy places there. Early on, during his Crimean War imprisonment, Yusuf Abdul had been told by a holy fool that he should go ‘walk in the forest’: even though at the time he was offended by this, he would only late in his life come to understand what it meant. He stayed in several monasteries – the Svyatogorsk Lavra in Kharkov, the Trinity-Saint Sergius Lavra in Moscow – but did not embrace the monastic life just yet. He stayed in Russia for twenty years longer. He had fallen in love with the Russian love for God, love for Tsar, love for motherland, all expressed and felt with simplicity. But he began to notice a creeping idolatry on the edges of Russian society: the idolatry of Mammon, the worship of trade, the pursuit of profit at all costs. The cupidity and materialism of the Russian bourgeoisie disgusted and repulsed him, and he began to entertain far-left and revolutionary political sympathies. In his biography he even says that his faith in God was shaken and that he came close to embracing atheism, but that God saved him from this disillusionment by pointing out to him again how the faithful still lived in Russia.

Nikolai lived in Saint Petersburg for some time, but spent most of his intervening years in Kazan. He again came under suspicion from the Russian police on account of his Turkish heritage, and was afraid he would be deported as a suspected Turkish spy. In 1891 he began making plans to move to Tashkent and take up a position in the civil service there, but God prevented. Nikolai had made a petition to Fr Ambrosii of the Optina Monastery, who occasionally came to the Kazan area for pastoral purposes. Fr Ambrosii bade Nikolai come to him, and began to speak with him about his way of life for the prior fifteen years. Then Fr Ambrosii sternly enjoined Nikolai to come to the Optina Monastery and stay there, for only there would he find peace for the rest of his days. He was accepted under the abbacy of Fr Anatoli, who would later refer to Nikolai as ‘our very own Saint Andrew the Fool-for-Christ’.

Nikolai obeyed, and he was tonsured as a novice at Optina later that year, and undertook the obediences of a novice to read from the Psalter. This outward obedience he found very easy, and he truly loved his brethren and the life he had chosen to lead; he did not consider himself worthy of the holy equality in which the monks of Optina lived. He soon found, though, that the real work of the monk was the inward work: not judging his neighbours, concentrating on his own sins and working to heal them. He found himself able to rely upon God, and even in the midst of the uneasiness and the terrible knowledge of his own sins, he was able to find forgiveness and joy in his life among the brethren. A year into his novitiate, however, the elderly Turkish monk fell gravely ill. It was decided among the brethren of Optina to place upon him the obedience of the schemamonk, lest Nikolai suddenly die.

As had happened several times in his life before, Saint Nikolai was given visions of things that would happen in the future upon earth, and also beatific visions of the heavenly realms, granted to him by the Most Holy Theotokos. Saint Nikolai had seen once, in his youth, the church in Odessa where he would be baptised, which is one reason for his devotion to Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker. At one point in his illness he was visited by blasphemous thoughts and sensory images of devils for three days. He describes how his soul was gripped by horror, and he found it a great effort even to begin to pray.

When he began reading the akathist to Saint Nicholas, he began to weep uncontrollably, and then his head was bathed in a light and a fire which did not burn him. He beheld a vision of an ocean of light, and before him appeared Saint Andrew the Fool for Christ and his disciple Saint Epiphanios, standing in silence before him. Looking beyond them he beheld a shroud of dark crimson, and enthroned in glory, our Lord Jesus Christ in robes like those of a bishop, and at his right hand the Most Holy Theotokos, and at his left Saint John the Forerunner holding the sign of the Cross. Saint Nikolai was filled with a sense of his own unworthiness even to behold them, but they all looked upon him with great kindness. He said it was not given to him to hear one word from their lips, but he did see Father Nikolai the schemamonk of Optina being welcomed into their company in the form of a child and in the robes of a novice.

He also saw a vision of hell, with Satan holding Judas at his side, and the false prophets, and numerous people of every age and condition in great despair, unaware of each other and unable to reach each other. These were all within an abyss, which lay between him and the crimson robe upon which Christ was seated.

He was then given a vision of paradise, which to him seemed both ineffable, inexpressibly joyous in any sort of human language, and yet also unaccountably familiar: there were trees heavy-laden with ripe fruits and birds which sang sweetly in harmony. Indeed, it seemed to him that paradise looked a great deal like the Optina Monastery, and its abodes seemed to him grander beyond measure than the palaces he’d seen in Constantinople, yet in the same familiar style. He saw the walls of Paradise inscribed with the names of the Twelve Apostles, yet he did not know the language of the writing. In his paradise, Saint Nikolai saw that it was peopled by a great multitude of those who had been beggars. These were conversing with an elderly man whom Nikolai was told was Saint Filaret the Merciful. He was seated in a garden, in the midst of which was planted the Cross. By an unearthly compulsion Saint Nikolai bowed before the Cross and his heart was filled with a great and unspeakable sweetness.

He was then granted a vision of the Most Holy Theotokos, enthroned as the Queen of Heaven, upon the balcony of a monastic palace and guarded by young men in luminous white robes. Saint Nikolai later recounted that he was not worthy to hear a word from her lips, but that he spent an immeasurable length of time in her presence meditating upon the mysteries of the Holy Trinity.

Saint Nikolai spent his time in Optina Monastery meekly and quietly, and did not speak about this vision to any except his confessor, Fr Barsanufii (and that only under obedience to Fr Anatoli), during his life – of which only two years were spent in the Optina Pustyn’. He only undertook his duties at the monastery, which included gathering wood for the common stove, meekly and quietly, and often did this alone without being told. When his neighbour, Fr Martirii, asked him why he did this, he merely told him ‘I love you’ and continued on with his work.

Saint Nikolai was given the great schema shortly before his death, and reposed in the Lord on the eighteenth of August (that is to say, the thirty-first of August on the civil calendar), 1893. Only when his body was being washed for burial and the brothers beheld the scars all over his body, did Fr Anatoli reveal to the monks of Optina what sort of man Saint Nikolai had been, what he had suffered in his life and what spiritual heights he had attained as a reward for his faithfulness. Blessed and long-suffering Nikolai, witness to the love of Christ among the Turkish people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Holy Hierarchs Barsēs and Eulogios of Edessa, and Prōtogenēs of Carrhæ

Edessa, now ar-Ruhâ in Turkey

The twenty-fifth of August is the feast-day of three holy confessing bishops of Mesopotamia, Saints Barsēs and Eulogios of Edessa, and Saint Prōtogenēs of Carrhæ. These bishops suffered under the unwise rule of the haughty and overconfident Arian Emperor Valens, who fell in battle against the Goths under Fritigern at Hadrianople in 378. Of these three, Saint Barsēs, similarly to Saint John Chrysostom, died in exile. The other two were returned to their sees under the saintly Emperor Theodosius and finished the course of their earthly lives in peace. However, the Church has never forgotten their sacrifices for the Incarnate truth of Christ’s full manhood and full Godhood.

Saint Barsēs [Gk. Βάρσης] and Saint Eulogios [Gk. Εὐλόγιος] were Syriac monks of extraordinary virtue and holiness in Edessa. According to the Church historian Sōzomenos, both men were given the honourable title of bishop in their monastery, not so that they could rule over a see, but rather in recognition of their many merits.

During the reign of Valens, there was a fierce persecution of the Christians who accepted the Nicene Creed. Because Saint Barsēs was among the most vocal supporters of the Council of Nicæa and, thus, opponents of the doctrines of Arius, the Roman authorities under Valens evicted him from his monastery in Edessa and had him exiled to the island of ‘Arâd (now al-Muḥarraq in Bahrain), which at that time was settled by Orthodox Christians of Syro-Phœnician and Arabic descent. The holy monk and bishop was greeted with great enthusiasm by the Christians of the island and treated with great honour. The authorities then had him banished further still, to the city of Pemdje (now an archæological site near al-Bahnasa) in Ægypt. Here too the Christians of the city greeted him with great warmth and hospitality. The exasperated Valens had Barsēs exiled still further away, to the remote location of Thenon. Saint Barsēs, physically exhausted by this succession of exiles, reposed in the Lord en route to this place.

Valens appointed an Arian named Lukos to the bishopric of Edessa. Lukos turned out to be a ruthless oppressor and persecutor of the Nicene Christians. He dismissed all the parish priests and replaced them with Arians, such that all the church buildings were under his control. This being the case, there was little for the Nicene Christians to do but to gather together in the open air outside the city of Edessa to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. When word of this reached Valens, he cruelly ordered the præfect of Edessa, a man named Modestos, to seize anyone found gathering for worship outside the city and have them put to death at once by beheading.

Modestos, who was in truth a kind-hearted and sensible man, baulked at this order. He met in secret with the leaders of the Nicene Orthodox Christians in Edessa, informed them of his orders, and besought them not to leave the city for worship. But this had the opposite effect of the one he intended. Desirous of martyrdom, the Christians of Edessa came out of the city on the appointed day and met in their accustomed place. Modestos brought the Roman soldiery there and grimly prepared to attack the Christian assembly. However, when he saw a woman running to the place with her infant son so as not to deprive the infant the opportunity for a martyr’s salvation, Modestos had a change of heart and called off his soldiers. He begged the Emperor to spare the laity and instead only make an example from among the clergy.

Modestos brought the monk Eulogios – who was trusted by all of the assembly at Edessa – along with eighty other clergy of the city before Valens. The Emperor ordered them to enter into communion with Lukos and submit themselves to his spiritual authority, but none of them would do so. Then Valens had them chained, paraded through the streets in disgrace, and then cast into a nearby Thracian prison. But as they were led through the streets, the faithful of Thrace took pity upon the imprisoned clergy, succoured them, gave them food and bandaged their wounds. Seeing this, Valens became infuriated, and ordered them to be sent two-by-two into exile.

Bishop Saint Eulogios was sent into exile together with Saint Prōtogenēs [Gk. Πρωτογενής], a cleric from Carrhæ (modern Ḥarrân in Turkey), who had suffered a similar fate to the confessors of Edessa. The two of them were sent into exile in Ægypt: the city of Antinoöpolis (modern aš-Šayḵ ‘Ibâda), which was then still a bastion of paganism. Here it was hoped that they would suffer ignominy and death among the hostile non-Christians, but the two holy men instead lived humbly among the pagans, taught them about Christ and patiently converted them to Christ in the fulness of time. When Valens fell in battle against Fritigern, and was succeeded by Theodosios, both Eulogios and Prōtogenēs were found alive and well, and were restored to Edessa. Here they lived out the rest of their natural lives, and departed to the Lord in peace. Holy hierarchs Barsēs, Eulogios and Prōtogenēs, confessors who suffered for the truth of Christ’s Godhood, pray unto the only lover of mankind that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saints Barsēs, Eulogios and Prōtogenēs, Tone 8:

Champions of Orthodoxy, teachers of purity and of true worship,
The enlighteners of the universe and the adornment of hierarchs:
All-wise fathers Barsēs and Eulogios,
Your teachings have gleamed with light upon all things.
Intercede before Christ God to save our souls.

Holy Hieromartyr Nikodim, Archbishop of Kostroma

Saint Nikodim of Kostroma

The twenty-first of August in the Orthodox Church is the feast-day of the martyr under Stalinist repression, Archbishop Saint Nikodim of Kostroma. As one of the martyrs glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church in the early 2000s, Saint Nikodim is particularly important to the modern Church for his insistence on serving his flock despite having the opportunity to flee. Much like Patriarch Saint Tikhon, Saint Nikodim was an advocate of Church unity and of peaceful action; and so he deserves to be remembered alongside the other saints who suffered under Soviet repression for reasons which were (on the part of the sufferers) non-political: such as Saint Valentin of Kansk and Saint Andrei of Ufa.

The martyr-bishop Nikodim, in the world Nikolai Vasil’evich Krotkov, was born on the twenty-ninth of November, 1868, in the village of Pogreshino, southwest of the town of Kostroma. His father, Vasilii Fedorovich, was a poor rural priest, one of the generally underfed, underpaid, underappreciated ‘black clergy’. He chose to follow in his father’s footsteps and entered the Kostroma Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in the year 1889. Around the same time he married a woman named Apollinariya Uspenskaya, and began teaching at a parish school in Olesh’. In February of the following year he was ordained a priest, and appointed to serve in the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the rural Ivanovo Kineshemskii region.

In 1896, the priest Nikolai lost both his child and his beloved wife. He undertook to join the Kiev Theological Seminary, and three years later took monastic vows and was tonsured under the name of Nikodim, after the righteous Pharisee and secret follower of Christ. He graduated from seminary and quickly became a priestmonk and an archimandrite; he sat for his doctorate in 1900, and then served consecutively as sexton of the Vladikavkaz Theological School, and as rector of the Pskov Theological Seminary.

In 1907, Saint Nikodim was appointed to be the bishop of Cetatea Albă in Bessarabia, which was then called by its Gagauz name of Akerman. In this position he also served as vicar to the Metropolitan of Chișinău. In 1911 he was ordained bishop of Chigirin in central Ukraine, vicar to the Kiev Diocæse and abbot of Saint Michael’s Monastery ‘of the Golden Domes’ in Kiev. In this position he headed several humanitarian and philanthropic projects, including missionary societies and the charitable Brotherhood of Saint Vladimir. In May of 1916 he personally made a trip to the Eastern Front in the Great War with gifts for the Russian soldiers.

The one consistent political instinct shown by Saint Nikodim through these turbulent years was the instinct for unity, both political and cultural. He opposed the Provisional Government of 1917, and was a signatory of a letter from the clergy to the Tsar calling for the State Duma to be dissolved. (He faced a brief three-month stint of exile to Saratov for this signature.) He also supported the hetmanship of the White general Pavlo Skoropadskii in 1917 also because he thought it would promote cultural unity, but he soon came to oppose many of Skoropadskii’s cultural policies in following years for precisely the same reason.

During the Russian Civil War, as well, he refused to take sides. In February of 1918, in response to a call from the new Patriarch Saint Tikhon and with the blessing of Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlenskii) of Kiev, he was instrumental in creating the Council of United Parishes – a union headed by AD Samarin which attempted to peacefully organise Orthodox believers at the grassroots level in the Soviet model, in order to protect the rights and promote the well-being of Orthodox under the new government.

Saint Nikodim was, like Metropolitan Antonii (Hrapovitskii) a steadfast and vociferous opponent of Ukrainian autocephaly. And even more strenuously than Metropolitan Antonii, he was one of three Kiev bishops who upheld the Petrine anathema on Ivan Mazepa despite the danger to his career from such a stance from the new government. Both of these activities put him at odds not only with the Soviet government, but also with the advocates of Ukrainian independence and – to a lesser but still noteworthy extent – the Whites. Later, under questioning from Soviet interrogators for his rôle in these events, he said in his defence: ‘I stood for one indivisible Church and Motherland, regardless of what kind of power it would have.’

Bishop Nikodim was captured and mistreated by the pro-independence followers of Symon Petliura in 1918, and shuttled from Galicia to Poland where he was held in confinement alongside Metropolitan Antonii (Hrapovitskii) and Metropolitan Evlogii (Georgievskii). After his release, he was released to White Army-held Kiev, from which he went to Crimea to serve as an auxiliary bishop in charge of the cathedral in Simferopol. When in 1919 the Whites under Anton Denikin offered him the chance to flee Russia, Saint Nikodim refused at once – in what would ultimately prove to be a path of martyrdom.

He was sent to Crimea in 1920, which was then under the control of Baron Pyotr Vrangel’. Saint Nikodim was appointed as an auxiliary bishop in the cathedral of Simferopol’, and organised the churches along the Black Sea coast that were under the political control of the White Army. After the Reds seized Crimea in 1921, again Saint Nikodim refused to flee. After Archbishop Dmitri of Crimea went into a semi-forced retirement later the same year, Patriarch Saint Tikhon appointed and blessed Bishop Nikodim as Archbishop in his place.

In November 1922 he was arrested by the Soviet government on charges of resisting the confiscation of Church property, tried at an open trial and sentenced to eight years in prison. He fell ill and was released on probation to Moscow, where Patriarch Saint Tikhon elevated him to the Holy Synod. Here, at the Donskoi Monastery, he concelebrated the Divine Liturgy with the Patriarch, all the while intending to return to his Crimean flock and keeping up a sustained correspondence with them, in a spirit of self-giving pastoral care. He spent the next ten years of his life under surveillance, his travel curtailed, arrested, sent into exile or thrown into prisons. He was sent to Kazakhstan twice (once to Túrkistan, once to Qyzylorda) and once to Tórtkól in Uzbekistan during the space of that ten years. When he was released from his exile he settled again in Ivanovo, in the Kineshemskii region in which he had begun his career as a priest. On the sixth of October, 1932 he was ordained Archbishop of Kostroma.

He served here for four years before he was arrested again, in 1936, on charges of communicating with clergy in White-held territories, hosting a monastery with ten monks, and possessing two homiletical volumes printed under the Tsarist régime. He was sent to Krasnoyarsk in 1937 on political charges, and his health declined precipitously. A prison doctor described multiple problems with Saint Nikodim’s heart and lungs, and recommended against sending him into exile in his present condition. Repeated interrogations by the NKVD and accusations of political crimes (which, considering Saint Nikodim’s temperament, read as overtly ludicrous) further took their toll on the archbishop’s health, and he died in NKVD custody of cardiopulmonary complications on the twenty-first of August, 1938.

In 1995, the Diocæse of Kostroma proclaimed Archbishop Nikodim a local saint. This was followed in August 2000 by a formal glorification by the Russian Orthodox Church, among the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is remembered in the local Synaxes of Saints of Kostroma, of Rostov and of Odessa. In Moldova Saint Nikodim is considered to be one of the national saints, because of his early service as bishop of Cetatea Albă and as vicar in Chișinău.

Saint Nikodim of Kostroma, in his life, had two primary concerns: ‘for the unity of the faith and for the communion of the Holy Spirit’. He lived and served under a White government and under a Red government – under the subtle distrust of one and under the open persecution of the other – but his fundamental orientation to the faith and his two central commitments did not change, whether in poverty, in war, in revolution, in counter-revolution, in prison or in exile. As we hold Saint Nikodim in reverence, we should also take account of political upheavals, and act to discern the time. Holy hieromartyr Nikodim of Kostroma, witness for Christ amidst the fires of war and revolution, pray unto Christ our God for the salvation of our souls!

Apolytikion for Saint Nikodim of Kostroma, Tone 4:

Adornment of the region of Kostroma, New Martyr Nikodim,
Firmly confessing the faith you were unrighteously condemned by the godless;
In prison having endured much suffering, you received the martyr’s crown.
Now standing before the throne of God
With the Most Pure Theotokos and all the saints,
Pray earnestly to Christ to grant us
The steadfast faith of the Fathers, peace and great mercy!

Костромскаго края украшение, новомучениче святителю Никодиме,
Веру православную твердо исповедуя, от безбожных неправедно осужден бысть.
В заточении многая страдания претерпев, венец мученический восприял еси.
Ныне же предстоя престолу Божию
Со Пречистою Богородицею и всеми святыми,
усердно Христу молися даровати нам
Веры отеческия утверждение, мир и велию милость.