Barlaam of Khutyn

Saint Barlaam (Varlaam) of Khutyn, venerable, whose secular name was Aleksa (Alexis) Mikhailovich, was the hegumen and founder of the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Khutyn, near Novgorod. He departed to the Lord on 6 November 1192 or 1193. His grave became a place of pilgrimage.

His life

He was born into a wealthy and noble Novgorod family, that of Michael and Anna; the year of his birth is not known; the sources say only the twelfth century, the Serbian one its beginning (the date 1200 in the record does not fit a death in 1192). As a youth he was tonsured at the Lisichy Monastery, then withdrew as a hermit to the hill of Khutyn (the word means "bad place"), on the bank of the river Volkhov, ten versts from Novgorod. After the death of his parents he gave all his inheritance to the poor and lived alone at Khutyn, where he built a wooden chapel. As the fame of his holiness spread, many disciples gathered. They were so numerous that he founded a monastery, dedicated to the Transfiguration of Christ. In 1192 he built the stone church of the Saviour and became hegumen of the community. It was then that he took the name Barlaam. Among the monastery's benefactors was Yaroslav, prince of Novgorod.

His deed of gift survives, written on parchment and considered the oldest Russian act to reach us in the original. By it Barlaam gave the monastery arable land, hayfields and other holdings from two of his villages, including the land on which the monastery stood. Before his death he named a monk called Anthony as his successor.

Episodes from his life

Once he was brought fresh fish. He longed to eat it, but mastered his desire, ordered it cooked and put in a vessel in his cell, and spent three days in strict fasting and prayer. On the fourth day he opened the vessel and, seeing many worms, said: "Barlaam, Barlaam, every creature turns to corruption once it falls apart; we too should part from every pleasure of food and from attachment to this life. If you want to eat sweet food and drink sweet drink here, why are you called a monk? You have left the world for the desert to serve your Maker." He threw away the fish and the thought of sweet food troubled him no more.

Going once to the archbishop, he saw on the bridge over the Volkhov a great crowd and an executioner about to throw a condemned criminal into the river (the usual death penalty in old Novgorod). The saint stopped the executioner and asked the people to give the condemned man to him, saying, "He will atone for his offences at Khutyn." All cried out with one voice that he should be given. After a time the man saved from execution became a monk and, living piously in the monastery, died. In another similar case Barlaam acted differently: passing the bridge again as a condemned man was about to be thrown, relatives and many of the people begged him to save him, but he, paying no heed to their pleas, told his driver to go faster, and the execution was carried out. People marvelled that he had saved one without being asked and not the other, though asked. On returning to the monastery, his disciples asked him. Barlaam answered: "The judgments of the Lord are a great deep. The Lord wills the salvation of all and does not will the death of the sinner. The first was justly condemned, but after the sentence he recognized his sins, and the Lord delivered him from death through my unworthiness, so that he would have time to repent and atone for his sins, which he did in the monastery. The second was condemned unjustly, but the Lord allowed him to die so that he should not later become a bad man; now, dying innocent, he has received from the Lord the crown of martyrdom. Such is the mystery of God's judgments: 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor?' (Romans 11:33-34)."

The monastery's fishermen caught among much small fish a large sturgeon. They hid it to sell it and brought the saint only small fish. Smiling at them, Barlaam said: "You have brought me the children; where have you hidden their mother?" Abashed by this rebuke, the fishermen fell at his feet asking forgiveness.

Once, as he took leave of the archbishop of Novgorod, the archbishop told him to come in a week. Barlaam answered: "If God blesses, I will come to your holiness by sleigh, on the Friday of the first week of the fast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul." The archbishop was astonished. On the eve of the appointed day deep snow fell at night, and all Friday there was a hard frost. The saint came to Novgorod by sleigh. Seeing the archbishop's distress over the untimely weather, which might freeze the crops, Barlaam told him: "Do not grieve, Master; there is no reason to mourn but to thank the Lord. If the Lord had not sent this snow and frost, there would have been famine throughout the land, with which the Lord wished to punish us for our sins; but through the prayers of the Mother of God and the saints He had mercy on us and sent the frost to kill the worms that were gnawing the roots of the grain. Tomorrow it will be warm again, this snow will melt and water the earth. By the Lord's mercy there will be abundance." The next day it was warm. Ears of rye with roots were brought to the archbishop from the field, and on them were many dead worms. That year the harvest was unprecedented.

One day Prince Yaroslav came to the saint in the wilderness. Blessing him, Barlaam said: "Be well, prince, and your noble son." The prince was amazed, for he did not yet know of the child's birth. Soon receiving the glad news that a son had been born, he asked the saint to be the newborn's godfather, and Barlaam gladly agreed. This was in 1190.

In 1505 Venerable Barlaam, whose relics lay under the floor in the cathedral of the Transfiguration of the monastery, appeared at night to the sacristan Tarasius. The saint showed him that Lake Ilmen, in flood, threatened to inundate the city. Barlaam prayed the Mother of God to save the city, and told Tarasius that for the sins of the townspeople they would be punished with a plague, and three years after it a fire would follow.

Veneration

Local veneration of Barlaam at Novgorod is known from the thirteenth century; from 1461 it began to spread across all Russia. His relics were enshrined in 1452. In 1471, according to a Serbian source, Tsar Ivan III ordered the saint's grave to be opened; when they began to dig, flame burst from the tomb and caught the church walls. The tsar was so frightened that he fled the church and forgot his staff, which is still kept beside the grave today. The Serbian monk Pachomius wrote his life. His life is one of the best loved Novgorod lives and has reached us in more than ten redactions, from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, reflecting many Novgorod legends. The venerable one is commemorated on the first Friday of the fast of Saints Peter and Paul and on 6 November (old style), and in the Russian liturgy he is named at the preparation of the bread and wine. Above the main gate of the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin hangs the icon "Saviour of Smolensk", with Christ standing and Venerable Sergius of Radonezh and Barlaam of Khutyn falling at His feet. The sources differ in some details: one says he died in 1192, others 1192 or 1193; the Serbian source has him born at the start of the twelfth century, while the Russian speaks only of the twelfth century.