Basil Aglomazovsky

Holy Martyr Basil Aglomazovsky, a peasant, is remembered together with the Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Probatov, a priest, and with the martyrs of Aglomazovo: Kosma, Victor, Naum, Philip, John, Paul, Andrew, another Paul, Alexis, another John and the martyr Agafia. Of Basil himself the calendar page says nothing more than his name, among the thirteen killed.

Nicholas Probatov was born in 1874 in the village of Ignatievo near Kadom, in Tambov province, the youngest son of the priest Alexander Probatov. He studied at the theological school in Kasimov and the seminary in Tambov, in great want. He married Varvara Algebraistova and, according to the custom of the time, they made a wedding pilgrimage to Sarov. In 1899 he was ordained priest, and in 1906 he received the parish of Aglomazovo, with a wooden Epiphany church of 1779. He renewed the church, set the choir in order, built a school for two hundred children, preached and taught religion, and took no payment for services. At the outbreak of the First World War he volunteered as a regimental priest and served in the Bakhmut regiment, where he saw how little faith remained. Returning in 1917, he said with sorrow that priests were no longer needed, that they were rather dwellers in heaven than on earth.

After the Revolution, when a detachment demanded the church's registers, he stood against it and at the village assembly spoke so that those who had come were driven off. In February 1918, when the Bolsheviks announced mobilization into the Red Guard, the peasants resolved not to enlist but to take the nearby town by force, and Father Nicholas blessed their going out against the persecutors of the Church. The uprising dispersed before the machine gun on the belfry, but the Bolsheviks sent a punitive detachment to Aglomazovo. The priest sent his family to Kalinovets; he himself stayed, saying he had never fled, and quietly accepted God's will, with his eldest son Alexander. Answering the mockery, he said that Christ suffered without sin, while we suffer for our sins.

The arrested were tortured in the cellar of a house. The village teacher, an unbeliever, had drawn up the list; the commander of the detachment left on it, of the women, only Agafia, alone in the world. They announced that all would be shot. In the evening eighteen condemned were led to the river Tsna and divided into two groups. Father Nicholas raised his hands and said aloud: "Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do." After the volley he rose again and began to pray, "It is truly meet...", and fell, killed by the second volley. Thirteen died: the church warden Kosma Egorovich, the peasants Victor Krasnov, Naum and Philip (father and son), Ivan, Pavel, Andrei, Pavel, Vasily, Alexei, Ivan and Agafia. The other five crawled by night to houses and were hidden by villagers. In the morning the peasants fetched the dead on a cart. The priest's body was stiff, with hands raised and fingers formed for blessing, and the people said: "The Father blesses us even dead." Priests from neighbouring villages buried him at night, with the windows covered so the punitive detachment would not see.

Saint Basil is commemorated on 11 November, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, all in the new style.