Constantine Bazhanov

Holy Hieromartyr Constantine Bazhanov, a priest and archpriest, was born on 3 June 1879 in the village of Selishchi, Kasimov district, Ryazan province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Vasily Alekseevich Bazhanov and his wife Tatiana Ismailovna. His full name was Constantine Vasilievich Bazhanov. In 1900 he finished the full course of the Ryazan theological seminary and in August of the same year was appointed teacher at the two-⁠class school in Karamyshevo. On 14 October 1902 His Grace Vladimir (Blagorazumov), bishop of Mikhailov, vicar of the Ryazan diocese, assigned him to the priest's place at the church in the village of Kolesnikovo, and on 24 November of the same year he was ordained priest. From 1903 he was teacher of religion at several zemstvo schools, in the villages of Norvinovo, Akulovo and Kolesnikovo. In his marriage to Evgenia Nikolaevna he had seven children: two sons, Vladimir and Nicholas, and five daughters, Anna, Claudia, Antonina, Zinaida and Alexandra.

All thirty-⁠five years of his pastoral service Father Constantine gave to a single parish, the church of the Archangel in the village of Kolesnikovo, built with the people's money in 1895. He enjoyed great respect among the parishioners, being an educated, kind and hard-⁠working man. Besides his duties in the church, he kept up his own farm, which brought him close to the peasantry.

With so large a family, Father Constantine's farm was very modest: a horse, two cows and a pig, and a house with outbuildings. In 1929 the peasantry and clergy were burdened with deliberately impossible taxes, and another wave of dispossession passed over the country. Then the family of Father Constantine Bazhanov also lost its farm. Unable to pay the impossible taxes, in 1931 he was sentenced by the people's court, for failing to meet obligations to the state, to a year and a half of imprisonment and, as recorded in the interrogation protocol, served his sentence in full.

For the second time, the archpriest Constantine Vasilievich Bazhanov was arrested on 19 September 1937 as an active participant in a counter-⁠revolutionary organisation. At the investigation he categorically rejected all the accusations, but despite this, on 6 December 1937 the troika of the UNKVD of the Ryazan region sentenced him to death by shooting, under article 58, points 10-11.

Father Constantine is commemorated on 23 December, on 23 June, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, and on 7 February, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, in the new style.