Aphonius of Novgorod

Holy Hierarch Aphonius (Affonius), metropolitan of Novgorod and Velikiye Luki, passed to the Lord on 6 April 1652. He is a saint of the Russian Church, commemorated by the old calendar on 10 February (in the Synaxis of the Hierarchs of Novgorod), on 6 April and on the third Sunday after Pentecost (in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod).

Earlier he was hegumen of the Boris and Gleb Monastery at Pereslavl. On 8 March 1635 he was consecrated metropolitan of Novgorod by Patriarch Joasaph. In 1639, with the patriarch's blessing, he wrote the work On the Spiritual Power of Grace, Given Invisibly from Above by the Action of the Holy Spirit in Baptism and on the Day of Pentecost. In it he justified the removal from the order of the Great Blessing of the Water at Theophany of the words and with fire, decided at the Moscow council of 1619. In 1641 he examined the relics of Venerable Alexander of Svir, and in 1643 he moved them to the Transfiguration church of the Alexander-⁠Svirsky Monastery, where he laid them in a silver shrine sent by the tsar. In 1642 he took part in the election of the new patriarch. In 1643 he raised Hieromonk Nikon, the future patriarch of Moscow, to the rank of hegumen of the Theophany Monastery at Kozheozero. In 1645 he took part in the coronation of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, who in the same year confirmed the right of the hierarch of Novgorod to judge and govern his people, clerks, boyars' sons and peasants.

On 7 January 1649 Metropolitan Aphonius asked the tsar in Moscow to let him retire to a cell, since he was in great old age. The request was granted, and on his return to Novgorod he retired to the Khutyn Monastery. His successor on the see of Novgorod was Nikon.

He died on 6 April 1652. His body remained unburied for eleven weeks, awaiting Archbishop Macarius of Pskov and Izborsk, who was to pronounce the burial service, since Metropolitan Nikon was at that time at Solovki, where he had gone for the relics of Saint Philip. Despite the heat, the body of Aphonius did not decay. On 4 June 1652 the saint was buried in the Martyrievsky porch of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia. His local canonization, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod, took place about 1831, and in 1981 the celebration of the Synaxis was established throughout the Church.