Alexis of Aglomazov

Holy Martyr Alexis of Aglomazov was a peasant of the village of Aglomazovo, in the Kadom district of the Tambov province, killed in 1918 together with his priest, Nicholas Probatov, and other parishioners. Of the eighteen condemned, thirteen were killed. The Russian Church honours them as the Holy Martyrs of Aglomazovo.

Father Nicholas Probatov was born in 1874 in the village of Ignatyevo, near Kadom, the younger son of the priest Alexander Probatov. He studied at the spiritual school in Kasimov and the seminary in Tambov, married Varvara, a priest's daughter, and after the wedding they went on pilgrimage to Sarov. He was ordained priest in 1899 and from 1906 served in the village of Aglomazovo, at the wooden Epiphany church of 1779. He renewed the iconostasis, founded a choir, built a school for two hundred children and preached with zeal. He lived poor and took no payment for services. In the First World War he went voluntarily as a regimental priest, although he had three children, and in 1917 he returned home grieved by how little faith he had seen.

After the revolution, when soldiers came to take the church's registers, he asked that the village be gathered, and the people drove them away. In February 1918 the peasants, unwilling to be mobilised into the Red Guard, decided to go to the district town and drive out the Bolshevik authorities. They asked the priest for a departure moleben, and after the service he blessed them to struggle against the persecutors of the Church of Christ. On the way most changed their minds, and those who reached the town were stopped by machine-⁠gun fire from the bell tower. The uprising dispersed, but the Bolsheviks sent a punitive detachment to Aglomazovo.

The priest sent his family away but stayed himself: "I have never fled and I will not flee now." He was arrested, beaten on the soles of his feet with rods and forced to dance; he said that he had never danced and would not dance before his death. When the tormentors mocked him, asking why the Mother of God did not protect him, he answered that Christ suffered though sinless, and we suffer for our sins. Among those arrested was Agatha, a lone woman, whom they tortured at length, but she bore it in silence. Before death all of them confessed.

Toward evening the eighteen were led to the river Tsna and shot. The priest said aloud "Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do." After the first volley he rose with raised hands and said "It is truly meet", and the second volley killed him. Thirteen were killed: the church warden Kosma Egorovich, the peasants Victor Krasnov, Naum and Philip, father and son, John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexis, John and Agatha. The others crawled at night to nearby houses and were hidden by the villagers.

The next day the priest's son, Alexander, found his father's body stiff, with the hands raised in the sign of blessing. People said: "Father blesses us even dead." He was allowed to be buried in the cemetery, and the funeral was held at night, in secret, by priests from neighbouring villages. They are commemorated on 11 November (new style), and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.