Basil of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Basil of Valaam was a novice of the Valaam monastery. He died as a martyr on 20 February 1578, one of thirty-⁠four brethren killed by the Swedes for the Orthodox faith.

Valaam lay close to the frontier between the lands of Novgorod and Sweden, and for that reason the community was robbed and laid waste more than once. The Reformation had been introduced in Sweden under King Gustav Vasa, and in the days of his successor John III a band of soldiers newly turned Lutheran, burning, in the words of Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, with zeal for their young faith, pursued the Orthodox Karelians. They crossed the ice to the island and fell upon the monastery. Eighteen elders and sixteen novices were put to death because they held fast to Orthodoxy.

Their names are written in a synodikon later kept at the monastery of Saint Basil, with the note that they were "beaten by the Germans at Valaam, elders and servants". The name Basil occurs twice among the novices, and the saint here is one of the two. Beside him are listed the priest-⁠monk Titus, the schemamonk Tikhon, the monks Gelasius, Sergius, Barlaam and many others, and the novices Athanasius, Anthony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Philip and Theophilus.

The tradition of their veneration tells that in the nineteenth century a monk living near the hermitage of Abbot Nazarius saw a procession of unknown monks coming in two rows out of a grove bathed in light. They sang burial prayers in an ancient chant, their faces were radiant and their eyes gentle, yet their robes were spattered with blood and their bodies covered with wounds. The grass did not bend under their feet, and in the thicket they vanished as they had appeared.

At Valaam, with the blessing of Abbot Damascene, the Divine Liturgy was served every year on 20 February (4 March new style) for their repose, followed by a common memorial service. The Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000 numbered them among the saints venerated throughout the Russian Church. The saint is commemorated on 5 March, new style (a movable date), and also on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia and on 22 August (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.