Saint Misail of Ryazan
The tenth of April is the feast-day of a somewhat controversial missionary-martyr of the Russian Church, who reposed in the middle of the seventeenth century, but who was glorified by the Moscow Patriarchate only on the twelfth of January, 1987, in the middle of Soviet glasnost’. Saint Misail of Aglomazovo was possessed of an indefatigable zeal for the faith and was a stickler for public morality, criticising lax discipline and especially drunkenness among the Russian clergy. Although this led him to take stands that might be considered politically progressive or even left-wing for this day, it also unfortunately earned him a number of enemies: one of whom shot him in the middle of a sermon on the first of April in 1656.
Saint Misail was born in a small village, Gruzino, in the Chudovskii region north of Veliki Novgorod. The estate on which he was born was owned by the Resurrection Monastery of Derevyatinsk, and he chose in his youth to join the holy ascetics there as a brother-monk. He was marked in his monastic life with a particular zeal for the holy offices that attracted the notice of a certain Metropolitan of Veliki Novgorod named Nikon.
Then-Metropolitan Nikon, with the approval of Tsar Aleksei and together with his friend and associate, the philanthropic boyar Fyodor Rtishchev, led an informal party within the Church called the Bogolyubtsy. The Bogolyubtsy were a social-justice movement, that essentially wanted to return the Church to the common masses and decrease the influence of wealthy and powerful boyars on the Church. They insisted on stricter standards for priestly comportment: no drunkenness, and no second marriages for widower priests. They also encouraged priests to give homilies in vernacular Russian during the Liturgy, so that ordinary people without learning in Church Slavonic could understand what was being done and said. And they sought to use the Church as an instrument of social welfare: Rtishchev personally funded two monasteries, a free public hospital, and a college for religious education.
Metropolitan Nikon saw at once a kindred spirit in the monk Misail, who had a clever and attentive mind, but was also simple and sincere in soul. Seeing his ability, he elevated him to serve in the vestry. When Nikon was promoted to the Patriarchate of Moscow, he recommended that the faithful monk be tonsured and anointed as Bishop of Ryazan and sent to minister to Nikon’s ancestral people, the Finnic Mordvins. This turned out to be no sinecure for the new bishop: he had his work cut out for him.
The new position made every possible demand on Saint Misail’s energy and patience. The situation he found in Ryazan when he first came there was, to put it mildly, discouraging. He found the clergy there to be unlearned and lax in discipline. And among the laity, he found mass indifference to the Liturgy, and found popular Orthodox devotions to be mingled with the pagan superstitions of the præ-Christian Mordvin religion. He went about at once attempting to correct the situation using a broad variety of means.
Bishop Misail could be both remarkably warm and kindly, or stern and severe as the situation warranted. He was apparently quite hospitable, particularly on feast-days, and opened his home to his parish priests and to the common people who came to him with their problems. He offered his advice and support – including monetary support – to priests who were willing to reform their lives and give up excessive drinking. However, with those who were not willing, or who backslid, he could be ferocious in his remedies. When he heard of widower priests who sought to marry again, Misail would have them dragged into the church, forcibly tonsured as monks, and sent packing to distant monasteries. He also threatened to excommunicate and bar from burial within the church pale, those among the laity who cheated their neighbours, who gambled and who engaged in profligate drunkenness.
He was also merciless toward the korchemniki, the (often boyar-appointed) tavern-keepers in rural Russia. Though there was probably something of a puritanical streak in Saint Misail’s crusade against public drunkenness, it is also true that the korchemniki were highly corrupt and often abused their positions to the detriment of poor people. It was their job not only to serve drink and serve a lot of it, but also to serve as the eyes and ears of the boyars who kept them stocked with mead. They were ideally placed to do so because their taverns were often the centres of gossip. Thus, the tavern-keepers were usually the ones to also do the boyars’ dirty work: hand over runaway serfs, or run down debtors in default. Saint Misail objected to these abuses as much as the public drunkenness, when he had the korchemniki banned from his diocæse.
However, his first impulse was always to mercy. When the Tatars attacked and ransacked Tambov, driving out the people from their homes, the bishop again opened his doors, his storerooms and his kitchens to the displaced residents of Tambov, and took the priests there under his care. He made no inquisitorial demands upon those priests, but instead did all he could to support them for the whole time until the Tatars had been driven back and they could return home.
These two contrasting tendencies in Misail – gentleness and ferocity, indulgence and strictness – seem indicative of his spiritual life as well. He was both a punctilious stickler with parish priests for keeping and pronouncing the Liturgy, and he spent much effort on bringing that same Liturgy into alignment with contemporary practice in Constantinople at Patriarch Nikon’s behest, for the ease of those same parish priests. He beat the korchemniki and flung them from the doors of his church, but he also held the doors of his home wide open to refugees from Tambov, without asking any questions of them. He was not averse to wearing exquisite robes to glorify God in outward splendour, while at the same time he kept a harsh asceticism upon himself in private. His was the sort of spirituality that Chesterton referred to, when speaking of saints like Éadgýð of Wilton or Thomas à Becket:
in Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart.Saint Misail soon began taking consideration of the spiritual well-being of the unbaptised Mordvin and Tatar peoples who lived in his diocæse. He had heard of several cases of the Mordvins having been cheated and tricked by religious charlatans pretending to be priests: he had these Mordvins rebaptised by legitimate clergy. In 1651, he sent a monk named Artemii to preach to the Mordvins – at the time, he was involved in aiding Nikon to reform the Church Liturgical books. Artemii managed to baptise several families, but his progress among the Mordvins was slow. The proud Finnic people were not easily persuaded of the truths of Orthodoxy.
Misail sought from Patriarch Nikon, and was given, leave to go and preach among the Mordvins himself. His first trip was in the winter of 1654, and he went to the Shatskii district, taking with him a monk named Vasilii, a clerk named Savva Zverev, and several other clergy. The zeal of the archbishop was impressive to the Mordvins there, 316 of whom agreed to be baptised. Bishop Misail then sent messengers to the villages around Shatskii, inviting the people there to come hear him preach – only these did not come. This being so, the archbishop went among them himself. However, a great throng of Mordvins came out to meet him and told him they did not want to be baptised. They were not Russians, did not speak Russian, and did not know to do in a church where Slavonic was spoken. They told Misail that they would be baptised only if the Tsar commanded it.
This missionary trip therefore met with only limited success. The second one he undertook was to Tambov, where he was much more successful. He claims to have baptised 4,015 souls on this journey to Tambov, and we have no reason to doubt him – although the means he seemed to have used were rather dubious. We have seen in his dealings with widower priests and korchemniki that he was not averse to using ‘sticks’ to get what he wanted as well as ‘carrots’, and this was one reason why his glorification came so late. Writing in 1986, one year before that glorification, Orthodox missiologist James Stamoolis writes:
Some missionaries did not take the trouble to learn the language of those among whom they were to labour. Others were content to use the power of the state to aid in the ‘conversion’ of unbelievers. One such worker was Bishop Misail of Ryazan, who did not hesitate to use the sword to win allegiance to the Gospel. Fulfilling the words of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 26:52, the bishop himself was slain. That his actions were not held in high esteem by the Church is evidenced by its reluctance to canonise him in spite of his martyrdom.In February the following year, Bishop Misail brought what the stubborn Mordvins in his care had requested: a letter from the Tsar commanding them to be baptised. He read this proclamation in several villages that had previously rejected baptism, hoping that this would sway hearts and minds. It did not. Misail was warned by his monk Vasilii and the boyar’s son Akindin Baholdin, that if he kept proceeding this way among the Mordvins it would be dangerous to his life. Saint Misail did not listen. He stayed in the Mordvin village of Berezovka with no retinue, and proceeded to the villages of Konobeevo and Yambirnaya with only a minimal detachment for his protection.
Outside Yambirnaya, on the calends of April, the heathen Mordvins set up an ambush on the road and lay in wait for the Archbishop and his small party. As they saw him approach, they surrounded him, bearing all manner of weapons and hurling abuse at him. Saint Misail, clad only in a mantle and bearing only a cross and his crozier, attempted to speak reason to them, and hold them to their promise to convert on the word of the Tsar. Here, ironically, he did not use weapons or threats. But the Mordvins began to brandish spears and scythes, nock arrows and fire guns. The archimandrite Vasilii was killed on the spot, and some of the deacons and other helpers fled. Misail stood his ground, with Akindin Boholdin interposing his body between the archbishop and his attackers.
One Mordvin attempted to strike Archbishop Misail with a spear, but Akindin turned the point away from delivering the mortal blow. Another Mordvin in the rear ranks, by the name of Garichushka, shot at Misail with bow and arrow. The arrow pierced the left hand of the saint and pinned it to his breast just over his heart. He crumpled to the ground. As Akindin Boholdin recounts, he ran from the Mordvin with the spear and went to help his master – and, helped by the deacon Varlaam, he managed to take Misail away from the fighting. Unable to mount a horse, the two men lay Saint Misail in a sleigh and bore him back along the road to Aglamazovo.
Once there, Misail asked that the icon of Christ the Saviour be brought to him and set before his bed. He began to weep and give thanks to the Lord for the wound he had suffered. He took confession and was administered the Gifts. He clung onto life for another nine days, however, in extreme pain from his wound. He had been shot on Holy Tuesday of that year, and had witnessed the Lord’s Pascha from his deathbed. On Bright Thursday, the tenth of April, he departed to the Lord.
Saint Misail was much-mourned by the people of Ryazan. Even the people he had baptised by means not altogether voluntary turned out for his funeral: Mordvins and Tatars. Some of them who were yet unbaptised, upon seeing his body, turned to the Church of their own will. The confessor’s body was interred in Pereyaslavl at the Archangel Cathedral. There it remained until the Russian Revolution, when the saint’s blood-stained mantle was taken to a local museum for display. It was returned to the Church only in 1994. The incorrupt body of Saint Misail currently rests in the Holy Trinity Monastery in Ryazan.
Saint Misail of Ryazan is not a particularly commendable model of Orthodox missiology, having been too reliant on the arms of the boyars and the blandishments and threats of the Tsar. It is better to rely for this on saints like Trifon of Pechenga or Innocent of Irkutsk, whose methods of mission tended to be less forceful, more patient, more lenient, more understanding of local customs and sensibilities. However, Saint Misail’s asceticism, his hospitality to refugees, his care for the poor, his zeal for the Liturgy and the Christlike way in which he met his death all speak to his presence among the saints of the Lord. Such he was, that the Orthodox Tatars of Ryazan remember his life with particular fondness and greeted his glorification in the glasnost’ period with gratitude. Holy hierarch and martyr Misail, formidable and righteous archpastor in Ryazan, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Apolytikion to Saint Misail, Tone 5:
Богомудре Святителю, Архиереев слава и сирых защитниче;
Ревностный проповедниче Христова Евангелия.
Утвердил еси верою сердца неутвержденная.
Священную одежду омочив в крови,
Яко мученик и пастырь прославился еси.
Священномучениче Мисаиле, молися прилежно Владыце Христу
О всех нас, почитающих святую память твою,
Да вышняго Причастия сподобимся и Света невечерняго.
Translation:
O divinely wise saint, glory of bishops and defender of orphans,
Zealous preacher of the Gospel of Christ!
Affirmed in the faith by hearts unaffirmed,
Your holy garments were soaked in blood,
Glorifying you as a martyr and shepherd.
O holy martyr Misail, praying diligently to Christ our Lord
For all of us here who revere your holy memory,
Let us likewise worthily partake of the Holy Eucharist and the Light Unfading!
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