Barlaam of Shenkursk

Holy Venerable Barlaam of Shenkursk, also called Barlaam of Pinega or of Vaga, whose name in the world was Vasily Stepanovich Svoezemtsev, was a posadnik (mayor) of Novgorod and one of the richest men of Great Novgorod. In 1444, on the river Vaga, he founded the monastery of Saint John the Theologian, in the Arkhangelsk region. A rich landowner, he devoted his life to the good order and flourishing of the northern land: he developed agriculture, built churches and defended the settlements from raiders.

According to the old sources, Vasily had inherited Zavolochye, and his grandfather, also a posadnik, had bought the lands of Shenkursk from the elders of the Chud in 1315. He was the first to bring ploughing to the Vaga; until then the Chud lived by hunting and fishing. He spent huge sums for the good of the wild country and above all for the moral education of its people. Living at Novgorod, he sent governors to Zavolochye and from time to time came himself. He loved the Vaga and for love of it built on a hill above the river a small fortified town, which he called "the little town of Pinega" after the river Pinega, which flows into the Vaga sixteen versts below Shenkursk. At Novgorod he ruled honestly and hated evil. Fulfilling the Saviour's commandment, he fed orphans, clothed the naked, tended the sick, and in his house all strangers found rest. On the Vaga he built many churches, among them those of the Nativity of Christ at Khimanev, of the Nativity of the Mother of God at Ust-⁠Pui, and of the Nativity of the Forerunner at Leda. By a special divine prompting he founded in 1444 a monastery in honour of the Evangelist John and endowed it with much land, confirming the gifts by charters, from which, those of 1452, it appears that the abbot was then Serapion. Sometimes he had to take up arms to quiet the Voguls and Ostyaks who attacked his settlements. Several times he was Novgorod's envoy to the grand princes, and his name appears in important documents between 1446 and 1456.

Convinced by his own experience that the affairs of the world are only worry and vanity, he withdrew from Novgorod to the beloved Vaga country. Having prepared his soul by works of charity, he entered the monastery he had founded, leaving his wife and children, and received monastic tonsure with the name Barlaam. His monastic life was very strict: by humility and obedience he set himself below all, as though he were not the founder and owner of rich lands. He served the Master with zeal every day, in fasting and prayer, and in deep old age passed away in peace on 19 June 1462. On the eve he left an order that the poor be fed in the monastery and bread distributed to them. It is said that after his death he appeared to the monks and urged them to give alms generously and to give everything to the poor in time of famine.

In 1552 there was a great flood of the Vaga. Before the day of his commemoration, when many pilgrims had gathered at the monastery, the top of the hill where the monastery cemetery lay broke off, so that the church barely stayed standing. Many coffins were then exposed, among them that of Saint Barlaam. His relics were whole, neither his monastic garments nor his coffin had decayed, while in another coffin of the same time only dust was seen. After the finding, the relics of the saint shone forth with many wonders and were later laid beneath the floor in the church of the Theologian. His commemoration was established in 1613. Scattered notes on his life had been kept at the monastery, and on their basis the monk Jonas of the Anthony of Siya Monastery composed his life in 1589; in 1630 a canon to the Venerable was written.

He is commemorated on 2 July, on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod, and on 1 November in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolia, all in the new style.