Andrew of Aglomazov

Holy Martyr Andrew of Aglomazov was a peasant of the village of Aglomazovo, in the Kadom district of the Tambov province, killed in 1918 on the bank of the river Tsna together with the village priest, Nicholas Probatov, and other parishioners. He is commemorated on 11 November (new style), on 7 February and on 23 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan.

The story of the martyrs of Aglomazovo begins with their priest, Nicholas Probatov, born in 1874 near Kadom, a priest's son, who studied at the seminary of Tambov and from 1906 served at the wooden church of the Epiphany at Aglomazovo. Of his service he said: "In my altar I have a corner of paradise." He founded a choir, built a school for two hundred children and took no payment for services. He took part in the First World War as a regimental priest. After the revolution he turned away soldiers who wanted the church's registers, and in February 1918, when the peasants set out for the district town against the Bolsheviks, he blessed them. The crowd dispersed under machine-⁠gun fire, and a punitive detachment came to the village.

The priest stayed, saying: "I have never fled and I will not flee now." He was arrested with seventeen others and tortured in the cellar of a house. Among them was Andrew, a peasant of the village, close to the church. Toward evening the eighteen condemned were led to the river Tsna and shot. Thirteen died: the church warden Kosma Egorovich, the peasants Victor Krasnov, Naum and Philip, father and son, John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexis, John, and the woman Agatha. The others reached nearby houses at night and were hidden by the villagers. The priest, rising after the first volley, said aloud "It is truly meet" and was killed by the second. The next day his body, with hands raised in the sign of blessing, was found by his son, Alexander, and people said: "Father blesses us even dead." He was buried in the cemetery, at night, by two priests from neighbouring villages.