Athanasius of Valaam

Saint Athanasius of Valaam, Venerable Martyr, a novice of the monastery, was killed on 20 February 1578, together with thirty-⁠three other brethren of Valaam, by a band of Swedish soldiers. His name appears in the synodikon among the "servants", that is, the novices: "Athanasius". He was numbered among the saints by the Jubilee Bishops' Council of August 2000. He is commemorated on 5 March (20 February by the old calendar), on 3 June in the synaxis of the saints of Karelia, and on 22 August in the synaxis of the saints of Valaam.

The Valaam monastery stood near the border between Novgorod and Sweden and was plundered several times. After the Reformation had been carried out in Sweden, in the time of King John III a group of soldiers, recently converted to Lutheranism, pursued the Orthodox Karelians. They crossed the ice to the island and attacked the monastery. Eighteen elders and sixteen novices were killed for their steadfastness in the right faith. With Athanasius, the novices named are Antony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Philip, Ignatius, Basil, Pachomius, another Basil, Theophilus, John, Theodore and another John, and among the elders the hieromonk Titus, the schemamonk Tikhon and the monks, among them another Athanasius.

In a vision of the nineteenth century a monk saw unknown monks, in two rows, sprinkled with blood and covered with wounds, who sang funeral prayers and vanished into the green grove; the vision is kept in the same source. Every year on 20 February a Liturgy for their repose was celebrated at Valaam, followed by a general memorial service.