Agatha of Aglomazov

Saint Agatha of Aglomazov was one of the thirteen people killed in 1918, in the village of Aglomazovo in the Tambov province, together with Father Nicholas Probatov, by a punitive detachment. Killed with the priest, among the faithful, were Cosmas, Victor, Naum, Philip, John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexis, John and Agatha. They are commemorated on 7 February, in the synaxis of the new martyrs, on 23 June with the saints of Ryazan, and on 11 November.

Father Nicholas Probatov was born in 1874 in the village of Ignatievo, near Kadom, into a priest's family, studied at the church school in Kasimov and the seminary in Tambov, and then married Varvara Algebraistova. In 1899 he was ordained priest, and in 1906 he received the parish of Aglomazovo, with its wooden church of the Theophany. He renewed the iconostasis, set the choir in order, built a school for two hundred children and preached much. He took no payment for services and had only two pairs of shoes. Of the service at the altar he said: "I have a corner of paradise in my altar." In the First World War he went of his own accord as a military priest to a regiment at the front, though he had three children, two of them a year old.

After the revolution a group of soldiers came to take the parish registers; the priest refused to give them without his hierarch's order and gathered the village, which drove the soldiers out. In February 1918, when mobilization into the Red Guard was announced, the peasants decided not to enlist and to go to the district town and drive out the Bolshevik leaders. Before setting out they asked Father Nicholas for a prayer service for the road; after it the priest gave a short sermon and ended with the words: "I bless you to go and fight the persecutors of the Church of Christ." The crowd scattered under machine-⁠gun fire. Later a punitive detachment came to the village. Father Nicholas would not flee: "I have never fled and I will not flee now." He was arrested, beaten and mocked; to make him dance, they struck the soles of his feet with rods, and he answered that he had never danced and would not dance before death. To those who jeered that the Mother of God did not protect him, he answered: "Christ suffered without sin, and we suffer for our sins."

Of the women placed on the list only one remained, Agatha, a woman wholly alone, for whom there was no one to plead. The executioners tormented her for a long time, and she bore it in silence. All the condemned made their confession. About the seventh hour of the evening eighteen condemned were led toward the river Tsna. Father Nicholas, with raised hands, prayed aloud: "Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do." After the first volley he rose and began to sing: "It is truly meet to bless you, O Theotokos", and the second volley killed him. Of the eighteen, thirteen died; the others crawled at night to nearby houses and were hidden by the villagers. The dead were: the church warden Cosmas Egorovich, the peasants Victor Krasnov, Naum and Philip (father and son), John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexis, John and Agatha.

The next day the peasants brought the bodies. The priest's body was stiff, with raised hands, the fingers in the sign of blessing; seeing it, the villagers said: "Father blesses us even dead." The authorities would not allow him to be buried by the church. Father Paul Maltsev of Usady and Father Maxim of Staroe Berezovo buried him in secret, at night, in the cemetery.