God-fearing simple peasants, we althy merchants, highly moral virtuous women, and famous rulers have become saints in Russia from time immemorial. The Russian Orthodox people sacredly honor their patrons of God, rely on the protection of the heavenly righteous, seek and find support in them on their own path of spiritual development.
Short Biography of His Serene Highness
Christianity in Russia has many great holy defenders. Patriarch Hermogenes is undoubtedly one of the most significant personalities in the history of Russian Christianity. Much in the biography of this man remains not fully clarified. Until now, historians are arguing intensely about significant milestones in his life and fate.
The biography of Patriarch Hermogenes is full of conjectures. It is known for certain that he was born in Kazan, was named Yermolai. Exact dateHis birth is unknown, historians attribute it to 1530. There is also no unequivocal information about the social origin of the patriarch. According to one version, Germogen belongs to the Rurikovich-Shuisky family, according to another, he comes from the Don Cossacks. Historians are more inclined to believe that the future Saint Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow was still of humble origin, most likely he was a simple native of the people.
The first steps of Hermogenes in Orthodoxy
Yermolai began his service in the Kazan Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery as an ordinary cleric. He became a parish priest of the Church of St. Nicholas of Kazan in 1579, took part in the ceremony of finding the face of the Kazan Mother of God and wrote "The Tale of the Appearance and Worked Miracles of the Image of the Kazan Mother of God", subsequently sent to Tsar Ivan the Terrible himself.
A few years later, Hermogenes accepts monasticism and soon becomes first abbot, and then archimandrite of the Kazan Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery. The elevation of Hermogenes to the rank of bishop and his appointment as Metropolitan of Kazan and Astrakhan took place in May 1589.
In this incarnation for a long time, and this is almost 18 years old, Hermogenes has been working hard. With his assistance, a tomb for local clergy is being created, and Christianity is being actively popularized (often with the use of violence) among the peoples of the Volga region. Entire families of new converts moved to special settlements under the supervision of Russian Orthodox.
Christianity in Russia was planted, to put it mildly, not veryloyal and humane means, the use of physical punishments, stocks and imprisonment in prisons was allowed to the recalcitrant "pagans". In a letter dated January 1592, the Metropolitan sets out to Patriarch Job the insistence that in all Orthodox churches the commemoration of the Christian martyrs and soldiers who laid down their lives defending Kazan in 1552 be established.
Father Hermogenes took part in the ceremony of transferring the holy relics of Herman of Kazan from the capital to the city of Sviyazhsk, which took place in 1592. A story about Patriarch Hermogenes would not be complete without mentioning his huge contribution to the construction of Orthodox churches and monasteries on Kazan soil, his participation in the coronation of Boris Godunov and the public, with the participation of a huge number of people, praying at the walls of the Novodevichy Convent.
Becoming a Patriarch
In 1605, the Russian throne was briefly occupied by False Dmitry I - a rogue who pretended to be Tsarevich Dmitry, but in fact was deacon Grishka Otrepyev, who had escaped from the Chudov Monastery. Metropolitan Hermogenes was called by the newly-minted "sovereign" to the court to work as a senator, but was disgraced due to the fact that he demanded the baptism of the Polish mistress of False Dmitry Marina Mniszek before the "sovereign" marries her.
On May 17, 1606, after a short reign, False Dmitry was overthrown from the Russian throne and his place was taken by the last of the Rurik dynasty - Vasily Shuisky. One of his first decisions was the deposition of Patriarch Ignatius (by the way, a former Polish protege) andthe elevation of the Metropolitan of Kazan and Astrakhan to the rank of Patriarch of All Russia. The Patriarchs of Moscow and All Russia did not create obstacles to this decision. In this position, Patriarch Hermogenes was active in ecclesiastical and political activities aimed at strengthening Orthodoxy in the Russian state.
The great protege of the Christian faith, alone opposing a host of enemies of Russia, Patriarch Hermogenes, whose brief biography is not able to contain a description of his entire life, great deeds, undertakings, his great unshakable faith in God, his impregnable firmness in his beliefs, is rightfully called by historians a "hard diamond" and a "new prophet" of the Russian land.
The political situation in Russia
Patriarch Hermogenes, photo of the icon of His Serene Highness:
The political situation in the Russian state at that time was very unstable. The royal throne passed from one hand to another, with catastrophic speed. Until one of the May nights of 1606, the highest boyar nobility, led by Vasily Shuisky (a representative of one of the noble princely families, a descendant of the princes of Suzdal, the last representative of the Rurik family) organized a secret conspiracy.
Its purpose was to dethrone False Dmitry I from the Russian throne and to enthrone Vasily Shuisky. To accomplish this task, prisoners were secretly released from all the capital's casemates, weapons were distributed to them, and in the early morning an alarm bell rang over Moscow, calling the people to Red Square.
Russian people, tired of the Polish oppression, poured into the streets of the city in a crowd to the boyars waiting for them with weapons. While a huge, bloodthirsty crowd rushed to massacre the Poles, the main backbone of the conspirators, led by Shuisky, broke into the sovereign's chambers and brutally killed False Dmitry I. On June 1, 1606, Shuisky officially took the Russian throne with the unconditional support of the Russian Orthodox Church. In order to finally convince the people of the correctness of this decision, the Patriarchs of Moscow and All Russia gave permission for the removal of the relics of the real Tsarevich Dmitry from Uglich to the capital, which were put on public display on June 3 of the same year.
Troubled Times
However, this measure did not bring the desired result. Less than three months after the events described, a rumor began to spread throughout Russia about the miraculous salvation of Dmitry, that he allegedly managed to escape from the hands of the conspirators. The Russian land hummed again with displeasure. The troops gathered in the north of the state refused to obey the king. Only Patriarch Hermogenes, in a troubled time for the Russian land, remained next to God's anointed, Tsar Vasily.
The situation around the new Russian sovereign became more and more unstable, many of the boyars and clergy who had previously supported Shuisky turned their backs on him, and only Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow, who himself was often attacked and humiliated, continued to stoically defend the tsar. An example of this is the incident that occurred in the winter of 1609, when, during an attempt to overthrow Shuisky, a crowd poured into the Kremlin toto persuade the boyars to remove Tsar Vasily, Patriarch Germogen was captured and escorted to the Execution Ground.
And even now, in the midst of a raging crowd, this old man tried to calm the people with the righteous word of God, to convince them "not to succumb to the devil's temptation." This time the coup was not successful, largely due to the wisdom and firmness of the word spoken by the patriarch. But still, about three hundred people treacherously managed to escape to the camp of the new impostor in Tushino.
A turning point in the Russian Troubles
Meanwhile, events began to occur in the state, contributing to a change in the course of the Troubles. On one of the cold winter days in February 1609, Vasily Shuisky concludes an agreement with the Swedish ruler Charles IX. A detachment of Swedish soldiers was sent to Novgorod and placed under the command of the nephew of the king's voivode Skopin-Shuisky.
The Russian and Swedish military forces united in this way successfully attacked the army of the Tushino impostor, expelled them from the north-west of Russia. The signing of the treaty by Shuisky and Charles IX and the entry of the Swedish armed forces onto Russian soil gave impetus to the start of open military offensives by the Polish king Sigismund against Russia. In the autumn of the same year, the Polish army approached Smolensk, counting on an easy capture of the city. But it wasn't there!
Smolensk courageously and valiantly, for almost two long years, resisted the onslaught of the Poles. In the end, most of the Polish army moved from Tushin to the besieged Smolensk, and at the end of the year the impostor himself fled from Tushin to Kaluga. In the early spring of 1610 the campThe rebels were finally defeated, and already on March 12, the people of the capital enthusiastically greeted the army of Skopin-Shuisky. Threat
the capture of Moscow by troublemakers passed, which, however, did not at all mean the end of the war with two aggressors at once - an impostor hiding in Kaluga and Sigismund densely settled near Smolensk.
Shuisky's position at that time was somewhat strengthened, when suddenly his nephew-hero Skopin-Shuisky died suddenly. His death leads to truly catastrophic events. The Russian army, advanced to Smolensk against the Poles, under the command of the sovereign's brother, was completely defeated near the village of Klushino. Hetman Zolkiewski, at the head of the Polish army, marched on Moscow and occupied Mozhaisk. The impostor, having gathered the remnants of the army, rapidly moved towards the capital from the south.
Deposition of Tsar Basil. Patriarch's Opal
All these fatal events finally decided the fate of Vasily Shuisky. In the middle of the summer of 1610, the rebels entered the Kremlin, captured the boyars, Patriarch Hermogenes, shouting about the deposition of the tsar, was forcibly taken out of the Kremlin. Unsuccessfully, the Lord of the Church again calmed the raging crowd, this time she did not hear him. The last tsar, who belonged to the most ancient family of Rurikovich, was overthrown from the throne of Russia, tonsured a monk by force and "exiled" to the Chudov Monastery, located (before its destruction) in the eastern part of the Moscow Kremlin on Tsarskaya Square.
Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow, even now has not renounced serving God and Tsar Basil, whom despitefor nothing he considered the true anointed to the Russian throne. He did not recognize Shuisky's monastic vows, because an indispensable condition for taking vows is the pronunciation of the words of the vow aloud directly to those who become monks.
In the case of Vasily's tonsure, the words of renunciation of everything worldly were spoken by Prince Tyufyakin, one of the rebels who forcibly overthrew the king from the throne. By the way, Patriarch Hermogenes subsequently called Tyufyakin a monk. The deposition of Shuisky, according to historians, ends the state-political activity of Vladyka and begins his devout service to Orthodoxy.
Power in the capital was completely seized by the boyars. The patriarch falls into disgrace, the government, nicknamed "Seven Boyars" is deaf to all the requirements, initiatives, advice and recommendations of Hermogenes. And yet, despite the suddenly deafened boyars, it is at this time that his calls sound loudest and most firmly, which gives the strongest impetus to the awakening of Russia from the "devil's dream".
Struggle for the Russian throne
After the deposition of Basil, the most important question arose before the boyars - whom to make the new king of Russia. To resolve this issue, the Zemsky Sobor was convened, the points of view on which the rulers were divided. Hermogenes persisted in the opinion of the return to the throne of Vasily Shuisky, or, if this was impossible, on the anointing of one of the Golitsin princes or the son of the Metropolitan of Rostov, the juvenile Mikhail Romanov.
On the instructions of the patriarch in all Orthodoxprayers are performed in temples to God for the election of the Russian Tsar. The boyars, in turn, advocate the election of the son of the Polish ruler Sigismund, Tsarevich Vladislav, to the Russian throne. The Poles seemed to them the lesser evil in comparison with the self-proclaimed False Dmitry II and his Tushino “army”. Only the Patriarch realized how disastrous for Russia the path chosen by the boyars would be.
The boyars, who did not listen to Hermogenes, began to negotiate with the Polish government. The result of these negotiations was the consent of the Seven Boyars to the anointing of Prince Vladislav to reign. And here the patriarch showed all the firmness of his character. He put forward several harsh conditions - Vladislav would not be able to become a Russian Tsar without him accepting the Orthodox faith, the baptism of the prince must occur before he arrived in Moscow, Vladislav would only have to marry a Russian girl, stop all relations with the Catholic Pope and Catholicism in all its manifestations. The ambassadors sent to the Poles with these demands returned without a clear answer, to which the patriarch said that if the prince refused to be baptized, there would be no further negotiations on anointing him to the royal throne.
The betrayal of the Seven Boyars
An embassy headed by Metropolitan Filaret and Prince Golitsyn is sent to Sigismund again with a clear order from the Patriarch to urgently demand that Vladislav accept Orthodoxy. Hermogenes blessed the ambassadors, instructing them to stand firmly on this demand and not succumb to any tricks of the Polish king.
And then the Patriarch suffered a new blow. September 21,at night, the boyars treacherously opened the capital's gates to the Polish army led by hetman Zolkiewski. Vladyka tried to be indignant at this action. But the boyars answered all the indignations of the patriarch that there was no need for the church to interfere in worldly affairs. Sigismund decided to take the Russian throne himself, in fact, simply by joining Russia to the Commonwe alth. A considerable number of boyars wished to swear allegiance to the Polish king. In turn, the Russian ambassadors firmly carried out the order of the patriarch, unwaveringly defending the state interests of the state of Russian and Orthodox Christianity.
One day Vladyka Germagen turned to the Russian people, admonishing the laity to oppose the election of the Polish ruler as Tsar of Russia. The ardent speech of the patriarch, filled with righteousness, achieved its goal, found a response in the soul of the Russian people.
The Boyars sent another letter with consent to the accession to the throne of King Sigismund, but due to the absence of the signature of His Serene Highness Patriarch on it, the Russian ambassadors spoke out that from time immemorial on Russian land, any business, state or worldly, began with council of the Orthodox clergy. And if in the current difficult times the Russian state is left without a tsar, then there is no one else to be the main arbiter except for the patriarch and it is impossible to resolve any matter without his command. Enraged, Sigismund stopped all negotiations, the ambassadors returned to Moscow.
On a winter evening in 1610, False Dmitry II was brutally murdered, which caused real rejoicing among the Russian people. Increasingly, calls for exile began to be heard. Poles from the Russian land. Some testimonies of the Poles themselves about this time have survived to this day. They say that the Patriarch of Moscow has secretly distributed instructions throughout the cities, in which he calls on the people to unite and advance to the capital as soon as possible to protect the Christian Orthodox faith and expel foreign invaders.
Monument to Patriarch Hermogenes on Red Square in Moscow:
Firmness of faith and the feat of the Patriarch
And again a threat crept up to Patriarch Hermogenes. Traitors and Polish henchmen decided to separate the patriarch from the whole world in order to prevent the patriarch's appeals from reaching the people.
On January 16, 1611, troops were brought into the patriarchal court, the courtyard was plundered, and Vladyka himself was subjected to humiliation and ridicule. But despite the almost complete isolation, the appeals of the Prelate of the Russian Orthodox Church spread among the people. Cities of Russia, which have already risen to the defense of the state for the umpteenth time. The people's militia rushed to the walls of the capital to free it from the Polish invaders. In February 1611, the traitors deposed the Patriarch and imprisoned him in the dark casemate of the Chudov Monastery, where they starved him and humiliated his dignity in every possible way.
Vladyka Hermogenes was martyred on January 17, 1612. Although historians do not have a common opinion on this issue. According to some testimonies, the Patriarch died of starvation, according to others, he was deliberately poisoned with carbon monoxide or severely strangled.
Some time after the death of the old manMoscow was spared the presence of the Poles in it, and on February 21, 1613, the Russian throne was taken by Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, for whom Hermogenes undoubtedly prayed to the Lord God.
Initially, the patriarch was buried in the Miracle Monastery. Subsequently, the body of Vladyka was decided to be transferred to the Assumption Cathedral - the pantheon for the higher clergy of Moscow. At the same time, it turned out that the relics of the saint remained incorrupt, therefore the remains were not lowered into the ground. The canonization of the patriarch took place in 1913.
