Arcadius Garyaev

Saint Arcadius Garyaev (Arcadius of Borovskoye, 1878-1918) the hieromartyr was a priest, teacher and missionary among the Mansi in the Urals region, killed by Red Guards in the village of Borovskoye in the summer of 1918. He was glorified by the Jubilee Council on 20 August 2000, and on 17 July 2002 the Holy Synod entered him in the synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church. He is commemorated on 1 July, in the synaxis of the new martyrs and in the synaxis of the saints of Yekaterinburg.

Youth and ministry

He was born in 1878 in the family of a priest in Verkhne-⁠Turinsky Zavod (now Verkhnyaya Tura), in the Perm governorate. There were seven children in the family. The source says he was of Hungarian nationality. In 1891 he entered the four-⁠class theological school of Yekaterinburg, kept by his father; his classmate was the future Soviet writer Pavel Petrovich Bazhov. In the third class he had a debt in Greek and was kept back a year. After the school, in 1895, he entered the theological seminary of Perm, but after a year and a half he was dismissed from the second class because of illness. He was a psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Mother of God in the village of Pokrovskoe, then at the Holy Trinity church in Kamensky Zavod (now Kamensk-⁠Uralsky). He was ordained deacon by Bishop Vladimir of Yekaterinburg and Irbit in the church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Yekaterinburg (serving on a psalm-⁠reader's post). From 1906 he was also a teacher of religion at the Novo-⁠Zavodsk zemstvo school.

From August 1907 he served as priest at the church of Saints Peter and Paul in the village of Petropavlovskoe, Verkhoturye district (now Severouralsk), and was teacher of religion at the zemstvo school. The parish was the largest in the diocese of Yekaterinburg, some settlements lying more than a hundred versts from the church. Here he began missionary work of enlightening the Voguls (Mansi). Then he was transferred as priest of the Kazan-⁠Bogoroditsk field church and made journeys through the north of the Verkhoturye district. At Yekaterinburg a diocesan missionary congress was held, under Bishop Mitrofan (Afonsky), at which a field church prepared in the workshop of N. Starikov was inspected: a light tent, for services in the far north of the diocese among the nomadic Voguls. It was an elegant tent covered with canvas, inside it had a collapsible table as altar and another for the table of preparation, and instead of an iconostasis three tall frames, with an icon of the Saviour, of the Mother of God and, in the middle, the Royal Doors. It weighed up to five poods and could be carried on a sledge by a troika of reindeer or even a pair. Father Arcadius, present, judged it suited to its purpose. From 1912, realizing that missionary work requires not only zeal but strong health, which he lacked, he asked to be moved. He was priest at the church of Saint Nikita in the village of Nikito-⁠Ivdelsky (now Ivdel), then at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Borovskoye, Kamyshlov district (now the Kurgan region), where he was also teacher of religion at the zemstvo school. He received the right to wear the epigonation for "zealous missionary work among the Voguls of the Verkhoturye region".

The martyrdom

In the summer of 1918 Father Arcadius married two couples in church: one of peasants of Borovskoye, the other of peasants who had come from the diocese of Ryazan. The sound of the church bells during the wedding drew the attention of a detachment of Hungarian Red Guards entering the village. Accusing him of counter-⁠revolution, the Red Guards led him to a nearby ravine and ordered him to dig a grave. When the grave was ready, the priest was ordered to lie in it face down and was pierced with six bayonet thrusts. The place was named "the Priest's Pits". For several days the parishioners knew nothing of the priest's fate, and the services were done by the priest of the village of Cheremisskoye, Father Alexander Romulov. The Red soldiers forbade burying Father Arcadius and ordered him taken to the padinik, the place where dead cattle were thrown; there they laid him, covering him with branches. The funeral service and the burial in a crypt behind the altar of the church of Saint Nicholas took place only after the Red Guards left. The death entry in the parish register, written by the deacon Alexander Chirkin, says: "killed by Red soldiers." On the same day Nikita Titovich Martyushev, aged 59, was buried, killed by the Red army. Clergy of the neighbourhood took part in the funeral.

The finding of his relics and canonization

In 1986 Father Nikolai Pokrovsky, rector at Borovskoye, blessed the digging of a "holy well" for the remains of holy water. When they struck the brick masonry of a tomb at a depth of two metres, a rich fragrance spread in the air. Questioning old parishioners, they learned it was the grave of Father Arcadius. In 1996 Olga Kulikovskaya-⁠Romanova, widow of Nicholas II's nephew, visited Borovskoye. In 2002 the way to the tomb was opened again, a brick was carefully taken out and all present saw a well preserved pine coffin, covered in places with peeling green paint. In the heat of July a delicate fragrance came from the coffin for two weeks; many prayed and kissed it; one woman was healed of her illness. With the blessing of Bishop Michael (Raskovalov) of Kurgan the grave was covered with earth again. He was glorified by the Jubilee Council on 20 August 2000, and on 17 July 2002 was entered by the Holy Synod in the synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors. The work to find the holy relics began on 6 June 2007. On 10 June, the Sunday of All Saints Who Shone in the Russian Land, after the liturgy led by Bishop Michael, a procession went to the burial place. With solemn singing the coffin was opened. The relics of the hieromartyr were vested in red Paschal vestments and laid in a new coffin, and then the priests carried them in procession to the church.

His family

His father was the priest Nikolai Alexeevich Garyaev, from 1887 rector of the church of the Intercession in Gorny Shchit and dean. His mother was called Maria Ivanovna. He had brothers and sisters: Maria, Anna (a teacher at the diocesan girls' school), Elizaveta, Ksenia, Zinaida and Viktor. His wife, Agrippina Evgenievna (born about 1883), worked as a teacher at the Borovskoye school, then left with the family of one of her sons. The sons were Mikhail and Nikolai. His troparion says that his service was renewed like the eagle's, that he served Christ in deed and word and that he lights up the ends of the Urals.