Athenogenes

Saint Athenogenes, hierodeacon and Venerable Martyr, was killed on 30 December 1608 (old style), at the sacking of the Theophany monastery in Kostroma, by foreign troops and those who sided with them, in the Time of Troubles. With him died the hieromonks Tryphyllius, Macarius and Sabbatius, and the monks Barlaam, Dionysius, Job, Herodion, Symeon, Cyril, Maximus, Joasaph and Gurias. They are commemorated on 5 February, in the synaxis of the saints of the Kostroma metropolis.

The monastery and the Time of Troubles

From the early seventeenth century Kostroma has remained one of the symbols of victory over the Time of Troubles. The Theophany monastery, built in the 1420s in the suburb of Kostroma by Saint Nikita of Kostroma, disciple and kinsman of Saint Sergius of Radonezh, was well ordered at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

In the autumn of 1608 the forces of the man who called himself Dimitry II, known as the "thief of Tushino", defeated the government forces in battles near the village of Rakhmantsevo and at Rostov. Like the inhabitants of other towns, the people of Kostroma decided to swear him allegiance, hoping thus to escape plunder and ruin. For this a delegation of nobles and townsmen was sent to Tushino, led by Archimandrite Theodosius of the Ipatiev monastery and Abbot Arsenius of the Theophany monastery. But soon the violence the inhabitants suffered from the invaders and those they installed led to an uprising: at the end of 1608 Galich, Vologda, Totma and Nizhny Novgorod rose, and in Kostroma the new rule was overthrown and the traitor governor, Prince Gorbaty-⁠Mosalsky, was captured and put to death.

To crush the revolt, the men of Tushino sent punitive detachments under Colonel Lisovsky and the captains Stravinsky and Lancoronsky, with two thousand Cossacks and six hundred and eight mercenaries. The local militia, poorly organized and badly trained, could not stand against professional soldiers. On 28 December (old style) 1608 the invaders took Kostroma, but after subduing the city they met resistance from the community of the Theophany monastery. On 30 December the monastery was taken by force and plundered, and its defenders died as martyrs.

The killing of the monks

The Kostroma church historian I. V. Bazhenov wrote that the monks, loyal to Tsar Shuisky, shut themselves in the monastery and chose rather to lose many treasures and even life than to betray their duty and oath; they all perished at the hands of the robbers after the monastery was taken by force. After killing the monks, the robbers plundered the icons, vessels, vestments, books and the rest, and destroyed the charters.

The monastery's synodikon, of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, carries a list of the slain: "the brethren, servants, maidservants and Christians of the monastery, struck down by the traitors to the tsar and by the Lithuanians". Of the brethren it names the hieromonk Tryphyllius, the hieromonk-⁠deacon Anfinogen, the monks Barlaam, Dionysius, Job, Herodion, Symeon, Cyril, Maximus, Joasaph, the hieromonks Macarius and Sabbatius and the monk Gurias. Servants: Peter, Athanasius, Epiphanius. Maidservants and others: Basil, John, Stephen, Nikita, Diomid. The synodikon also names thirty-⁠four peasants of the monastery who were killed, from eight villages. The same band also claimed the monks of the Exaltation of the Cross monastery in the Kostroma Kremlin, among them Archimandrite Gennadius, the hieromonk Antony and nine other monks.

The invaders' triumph was short. In February 1609 a new uprising swept Kostroma; many traitor nobles were drowned in the Volga, and the detachment left in the town shut itself in the Ipatiev monastery but was soon defeated by Russian forces under the governor David Zherebtsov.

Veneration

The memory of those killed at the capture of the Theophany monastery was kept every year. The refectory rule of the monastery, of the first half of the seventeenth century, says: "On 30 December a memorial service is to be sung and a Liturgy served in synaxis for the slain brethren, servants, maidservants and Christians of the monastery, who in the year 7117 were struck down by the traitors to the tsar and by the Lithuanians." The commemoration continued after the monastery was turned into a convent in the nineteenth century. It was interrupted only by the forced closing in the twentieth. The monastery has been reviving since 1990. On 5 March 2004 Patriarch Alexy II confirmed the list of the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma, which includes the names of the monastery's defenders who fell in the Time of Troubles; since then they have been venerated as saints of the Kostroma land.