  
  
 
       
   
      
|
July 12th (VII - 25)
Icon of the Martyrs Proklos & Hilarios and Righteous Veronica
Martyrs -- Proklos and Ilarion (II); Golinducha, in Holy Baptism
Mary (+ 591); Andrew Stratelates, Herakles, Faustus, Minos and their companions.
Monks -- Michael Maleinos (+ 962); John (+ 998), Euphymios (+ 1028) and Gabriel
Svyatogorets (X) (Athos) (Gruzinian). Martyrs Theodore (Feodor) the Varangian and his
son John, at Kiev (+ 983). Monks Arsenii of Novgorod (+ 1570); Simon of Volomsk
(+ 1641). Righteous Veronica (I). Icon of the Mother of God, named "Three-Handed"
("Troeruchitsa").
The Holy Martyrs Proklos and Ilarion were natives of the village
of Kalipta, near Ancyra, and they suffered during the time of a persecution under the
emperor Trajan (98-117). Saint Proklos was put under arrest first. Brought before the
governor Maximus, he fearlessly confessed his faith in Christ. The governor decided to
compel the saint by force to submit himself to the emperor to offer sacrifice to the
pagan gods. During the time of tortures, the martyr predicted to Maximus, that soon he
himself would be compelled to confess Christ as the True God. They forced the martyr to
run after the chariot of the governor, heading towards the village Kalipta. Exhausted
along the way, Saint Proklos prayed, that the Lord would halt the chariot. By the power
of God the chariot halted, and no sort of force could move it from the spot. The
dignitary sitting in it was as it were petrified and remained unmoving until such time,
at the demand of the martyr, that he would sign a statement with a confession of Christ;
only after this was the chariot with the governor able to continue on its way.
The humiliated pagan took fierce revenge on Saint Proklos: after many
tortures he commanded that he be led out beyond the city, tied to a pillar and executed
with arrows. The soldiers, leading saint Proklos to execution, told him to give in and
save his life, but the saint said that they should do what they had been ordered.
Along the way to the place of killing, there met them the nephew of
Saint Proklos, Ilarion, who with tears hugged his martyr-uncle and also confessed himself
a Christian. The soldiers seized him, and he was thrown into prison. The holy Martyr
Proklos beneathe the hail of arrows prayed for his tormentors and with prayer gave up his
soul to God.
Saint Ilarion, having been brought to trial, with the same
fearlessness as Saint Proklos confessed himself a Christian, and after tortures he was
sentenced to death. They tied the martyr's hands and dragged him by his feet through the
city, wounded and bloody, and then they beheaded him 3 days after the death of his uncle,
the holy Martyr Proklos. Christians buried them together in a single grave.
The Monk Michael Maleinos was born about the year 894 in the
Charsian region (Cappadocia) and at Baptism he received the name Manuel. He was of the
same lineage with the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-911). At age 18 Manuel went
off to Bithynia, to the Kimineia monastery under the guidance of the elder, John
Heladites, who vowed him into monasticism with the name Michael. Fulfilling a very
difficult obedience in spite of his illustrious lineage, he demonstrated an example of
great humility.
After the passage of a certain while he was vouchsafed the grace of
the priesthood. Constantly studying the Holy Scripture, the Monk Michael showed how the
priesthood ought to be properly conjoined with monasticism, -- he attained to an high
degree of dispassion and acquired the gift of perspicacity. He was very compassionate
and kindly towards people, he could not let remain without help and consolation those
who were in need and in sorrow, and by his ardent prayer he accomplished many miracles.
After much monastic effort under the guidance of the elder John, the
Monk Michael besought of him blessing for a solitary life in a cave, Five days of the
week he spent at prayerful concentration and only on Saturday and Sunday did he come to
the monastery for participation in Divine-services and communion of the Holy Mysteries.
By his example of sublime spiritual life the holy hermit attracted
many seeking after salvation. In a desolate place called Dry Lake, the Monk Michael
founded a monastery for the brethren gathering to him, and gave it a strict ustav
(monastic-rule). When the monastery was secure, the Monk Michael went to a still more
remote place and built there a new monastery. By the efforts of the holy abba, all the
Kumineia mountain was covered over by monastic communities, where constantly prayers
were raised up for all the world to the Throne of the Most-High.
About the year 953 amongst the brethren entered the youth Abraham,
flourishing under the guidance of Saint Michael, who gave him the name Athanasias. Later
on the Monk Athanasias (Comm. 5 July) himself founded the reknown Athos Laura, the first
life-in-common monastery on the Holy Mountain. In the building of the Laura great help
was rendered to the Monk Athanasias by the nephew of the Monk Michael -- the later
Byzantine emperor Nicephoros Phokas (963-969), who in visiting his uncle met also
Athanasias. After fifty years of incessant monastic effort the monk Michael Maleinos
peacefully expired to the Lord in the year 962.
The Holy Martyrs Theodore (Feodor) the Varangian and his son
John lived at Kiev in the X Century, when the Varangians, ancestors of the
present-day Swedes and Norwegians accepted a particularly active role in the governance
and military life of Rus'. Merchants and soldiers, they opened up new trade routes to
Byzantium and to the East, they took part in campaigns against Tsar'grad (i.e.
Constantinople), and they constituted a significant part of the populace of ancient
Kiev and the princely mercenary retinues. The chief trade route of Rus' -- from the
Baltic Sea to the Black Sea -- was then called "the Way from the Varangians to the
Greeks".
The chieftains and organisers of the early Russian realm relied upon
their Varangian retinues in their undertakings. Just like the Slavs, among whom they
lived, many of the sea-faring newcomers under the influence of the Byzantine Church
accepted holy Baptism. Kievan Rus' occupied a middle place between the pagan
Scandinavians and the Orthodox Byzantines, whereby there prevailed in the spiritual life
at Kiev alternately in turn the vivifying influence of the Christian faith (under Blessed
Askol'd in the years 860?882, under Igor and Saint Ol'ga in the years 940-950), and then
in alternation the destructive whirlwind of paganism, blowing down from the North from
the Varangian Sea (under the reign of Oleg, killing Askol'd in 882; under the revolt of
the Drevliani murdering Igor in 945; under prince Svyatoslav, refusing to accept Baptism
despite the insistence of his mother, Equal-to-the-Apostles Ol'ga).
When in 972 (other sources give 970) Svyatoslav was killed by the
Pechenegs, the great-princedom of Kiev became the undertaking of his eldest son,
Yaropolk. Oleg the middle son held the Drevlianian land, while Vladimir the youngest
son held Novgorod. The reign of Yaropolk (970-978), just like that of his grandmother
Ol'ga, again became a time of predominating Christian influence in the spiritual life
of Rus'. Yaropolk himself, in the opinion of historians, confessed Christianity, although
possibly of the Latin rite, and this did not at all correspond to the interests of the
Scandinavian mercenary retinue -- pagans, who were accustomed to consider Kiev a bulwark
of their own influence in the Slavic lands. Their leaders strove to create discord
between the brothers themselves, they incited a fratricidal war of Yaropolk with Oleg,
and after this when Oleg was killed, they supported Vladimir in a struggle against
Yaropolk.
The future Baptiser of Rus' started on his way as a convinced pagan
and he relied upon the Varangians, especially those having come to him from over the sea,
as his military force. His campaign against Kiev in 978, crowned with complete success,
pursued not only military-political aims: it was also a religious campaign of
Russo-Varangian paganism against the outgrowth of Kievan Christianity. On 11 June 978
Vladimir "sat on the throne of his father at Kiev", and the hapless Yaropolk, invited
by his brother for negotiations, upon his arrival in the entrance hall was treacherously
murdered by two Varangians stabbing him with swords. For the intimidation of the Kievans,
among whom were already many Christians both Russian and Varangian, to renew and
strengthen with new idols, in the pagan sanctuary human sacrifices were made -- til then
a practise unknown to the Dniepr' Slavs. In the chronicles it says about the setting up
of idols by Vladimir: "And they brought to them sacrifices, acclaiming them gods, and
they brought to them their own sons and daughters, and these sacrifices went to the
devils... both the Russian land and this hill were defiled with blood".
Apparently, to this first period of the triumph of paganism at Kiev
with the coming to rule of Vladimir, there may have followed the destruction of the holy
Martyrs Theodore (Feodor) and his son John, -- which possibly in this case would set the
date as 12 July 978. But it is probable otherwise, that the exploit of the holy Kievan
Varangian-martyrs took place in the year 983, when the wave of pagan reaction rolled not
only through Rus', but throughout all the Slavic-Germanic world. Against Christ and the
Church almost simultaneously there rose up pagans in Denmark, Germany, the Baltic Slavic
principalities, and everywhere the unrest was accompanied by the destruction of churches,
and by the killing of clergy and Christian confessors. This was the year Vladimir went
on campaign against the Lithuanian tribe of the Yatvyagi, and gained victory over them.
In recognition of this victory the Kievan pagan-priests also decided again to make a
bloody sacrificial offering.
...There lived among the Kievans, -- reports the Monk Nestor the
Chronicler, -- a Varangian by the name of Feodor, for a long time before this in military
service at Byzantium and there having accepted holy Baptism. His pagan name, preserved in
the term "Turov pagan-temple", was Tur (Scandinavian Thor) or Utor (Scandinavian Ottar),
and in the old manuscripts is met with also this other signature. Feodor had a son John,
a pious and handsome youth, confessing Christianity like his father.
"And said the elders and boyars: let us cast lots upon the lads and
maidens, upon whom it fall, that one we shall slaughter in sacrifice to the gods".
Evidently not unintentionally the lots, thrown by the pagan priests, fell upon the
Christian John.
When the messengers told Feodor, that his son "the gods themselves had
chosen, that we may offer him to them in sacrifice", the old warrior decisively answered:
"This is not a god, but wood. Today it is, and tomorrow it rots. They do not eat, nor
drink nor speak, but are crafted by human hands from wood. God however is One, He it is
the Greeks do serve and worship. He created heaven and earth, the stars and the moon, the
sun and man, and foreordained him to live upon the earth. But these gods what have they
created? They themselves are made. I shalt not give my son over to devils".
This was a direct challenge by the Christian to the customs and
beliefs of the pagans. An enraged crowd of pagans rushed at Feodor, smashed up his
courtyard, and surrounded the house. Feodor, in the words of the chronicler, "stood at
the entrance-way with his son", and bravely with weapon in hand he met the enemy. (The
entrance-way in old Russian houses as mentioned was set up on posts of a roofed gallery
of the second storey, to which a ladder led up). He calmly gazed upon the devil-driven
pagans and said: "If they be gods, let them dispatch one of the gods to take my son".
Seeing, that in a fair fight with them there would be no overcoming Feodor and John --
brave and seasoned warriors, the besiegers knocked down the gallery posts, and when they
were broken, the crowd rushed upon the confessors and murdered them...
Already during the era of the Monk Nestor, less than an hundred years
after the confessor's deed of the Varangians, the Russian Orthodox Church venerated them
within the assembly of the saints. Feodor and John became the first martyrs for the holy
Orthodox faith in the Russian land. They were called the first "Russian citizens of the
heavenly city" by the transcriber of the Kievo-Pechersk Paterikon, Sainted-Bishop Simon
of Suzdal' (+ 1226, Comm. 10 May). The last of the bloody pagan sacrifices at Kiev became
the first holy Christian sacrifice -- with a co-suffering for Christ. The pathway "from
the Varangians to the Greeks" became for Rus' the pathway from paganism to Orthodoxy,
from darkness to light.
On the place of the martyrdom of the Varangians, holy
Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir later on erected the Desyatin Church of the Uspenie
(Dormition, Repose) of the MostHoly Mother of God, consecrated on 12 May 996 (celebrated
12 May). The relics of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Ol'ga were transferred into it in
the year 1007. Eight years later it was destined to become the final resting place of
Saint Vladimir himself, -- the Baptiser of the Russian land, and in 1044 his son,
Yaroslav the Wise, transferred into the church the remains of his uncles, Yaropolk and
Oleg, previously "having baptised the bones". Evidently, this final matter was called
for by the requirement of a church rule about repeating a baptism of a Christian in the
absence of reliable witnessing of a first baptism. But on the other hand, in old Kiev
they ascribed great significance to ancient-Christian sayings about the possibility
through an especial mercy of God of an after-death making of the sacrament of Baptism
over people, having died outside the community of the Church. Such an account is read,
for example, in the reknown artifact of old-Russian instructive literature -- "the
Izbornik [article-collection] of 1076", belonging to the son of Yaroslav the Wise, noble
prince Svyatoslav (+ 1076).
...Wondrous is God in His saints. Time does not spare stones and
bronze, but the lower framework of the wooden house of the holy Varangrian martyrs,
burned a thousand years previous, have been preserved to our day: it was discovered in
the year 1908, during the time of excavation at Kiev at the altar of the Desyatin
church.
The MonkMartyr Simon of Volomsk, in the world Simeon, son of
the peasant Mikhail from the vicinity of Volokolamsk, was born in the year 1586. At 24
years of age, after long pilgrimage through Orthodox monasteries, he took monastic vows
at the Pinegsk Makar'ev monastery, and in the year 1613 he settled 80 versts to the
southwest of Ustiug at the River Kichmenga, in the Volomsk forest. Here he spent five
years alone, remote from people; he nourished himself with vegetables which he himself
cultivated, and sometimes indeed asked for bread in some settlement. When lovers of the
quiet life began to gather to him, the Monk Simon, through a grant of tsar Mikhail
Feodorovich and with the blessing of the Rostov metropolitan Varlaam, erected a temple
in honour of the Cross of the Lord, and in 1620 was made head of the monastery founded
by him. A strict ascetic, serving as an example to all in virtue, love of toil, fasting
and prayer, he was wickedly murdered in his own monastery on 12 July 1641. The body of
the Monk Simon with reverence was buried on the left side of the church built by
him.
Veneration of the monk began in 1646 after gracious manifestations
witnessed to of his relics. His life was compiled in the XVII Century.
The Holy Martyress Golinducha, in Baptism Mary, lived in Persia
during the reign of Chosroes I the Elder. She was the wife of the chief magician of the
Persian empire. Endowed with a lucid mind, Golinducha perceived the falseness of the
pagan wisdom, and she pondered much about what the true faith might be. Having learned
about the existence of Christianity, she very much wanted to learn what it taught. Soon
through the providence of God, her wish was fulfilled. In sleep an Angel showed
Golinducha the place of torment of sinners and the paradise, in which dwell the believers
in Christ, the True God. After this dream she began fervently to pray to the True God,
so that He might help her become a Christian. The Angel of God directed Golinducha to a
Christian priest, from whom she received holy Baptism with the name Mary.
After Baptism she left her magician-husband, and he made complaint to
the emperor Chosroes. The emperor himself, and dignitaries sent by him, and illustrious
women all urged Golinducha to return to her husband. For her decisive refusal the emperor
sentenced her to be locked up in life imprisonment. In prison Saint Mary-Golinducha spent
18 years.
During the reign of the successor of the emperor Chosroes, his son
Ormisdas, in Persia there had arrived an ambassador of the Byzantine emperor Mauricius,
-- Aristoboulos. Having learned, that for many years already Mary the Christian was
languishing in prison, Aristoboulos with the permission of the emperor repeatedly visited
her in prison and taught her to sing the Psalms of David. After the departure of
Aristoboulos, Ormisdas gave orders to present Saint Mary-Golinducha before him and for a
long time he tortured her, subjecting her to all sorts of beatings and torments. But in
all the torments through the intercession of God the saint was preserved unharmed. When
they gave her over for defilement, the Lord made her invisible to the impious and
preserved her purity. Finally the emperor gave orders to cut off the head of the
martyress, but the Lord sheltered her from the hand of the executioner and brought her
to Christians living in concealment.
When the persecution against Christians in Persia ceased during the
reign of Chosroes II, -- who occupied the throne with the help of the Byzantine emperor
Mauricius, Saint Mary-Golinducha began openly to preach the Christian faith.
At the end of her life Saint Mary made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where
she prayed at the tomb of the Lord and other holy places. On the return journey she died
(+ 591) in the church of the holy Martyr Sergios at Niziba.
Righteous Veronica was, according to tradition, that woman
with the issue of blood, who received healing by a touch to the hem of the robe of Christ
(Mt. 9: 20-22). She gave the Lord a veil, with which the Lord wiped His face, when He
went to crucifixion. On the veil was imaged the Face of the Lord.
The Icon of the Mother of God, named "Three-Handed": The
wonderworking image, before which the Monk John Damascene (Comm. 4 December) received
healing of a cut-off hand, was given over by him to the Laura of the Monk Sava the
Sanctified. In the XIII Century the icon was situated in Serbia, and afterwards it was
miraculously transported to Athos to the Khilendaria monastery. A more detailed account
about the icon is located under 28 June.
© 1998 by translator Fr. S. Janos
|