Cosmas of Aglomazov

Holy Martyr Cosmas of Aglomazov, church elder, was killed in 1918 together with the holy hieromartyr Nicholas Probatov, priest of the village of Aglomazovo in the Tambov province, and other parishioners: Victor, Nahum, Philip, John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexei, John and the martyr Agatha. His full name was Cosmas Egorovich.

Father Nicholas Probatov was born in 1874 in the village of Ignatievo near Kadom, the younger son of the priest Alexander Nikolaevich Probatov. He studied at the theological school in Kasimov and at the seminary in Tambov, in great poverty, married Varvara Algebraistova, was ordained in 1899, and from 1906 served at Aglomazovo, at the wooden Epiphany church built in 1779. He made his parish a place of beautiful singing and of schooling: he built a spacious building for a school of two hundred children, preached with gift and took no payment for services. In the First World War he went as a regimental priest, and returning in 1917 he said that priests were no longer needed, being rather inhabitants of heaven than of earth.

After the Bolsheviks ordered the confiscation of parish registers, Father Nicholas assembled the village and drove off those who had come for the books. In February 1918, when mobilisation into the Red Guard was announced, the peasants resolved to set out for the district town, twenty-⁠five versts away, to drive out the Bolshevik leaders. They asked Father Nicholas for a prayer service for the road, and he gave them his blessing. On the way many turned back, and those who reached the town were halted by machine-⁠gun fire from a belfry. For this a punitive detachment was sent to Aglomazovo. Father Nicholas sent his family to a neighbouring village, stayed with his eldest son Alexander, and accepted calmly what was to come.

The arrested were taken to a cellar, questioned and beaten. With Father Nicholas, who answered his mockers that he had never danced and would not dance even before death, Agatha was also arrested, the only woman, for whom there was nobody to plead. All confessed before death. Toward evening the eighteen condemned were led to the river Tsna. Father Nicholas raised his hands and prayed: "Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do". After the first volley he rose and began to sing "It is truly meet", and the second volley killed him. Of the eighteen, thirteen died, and the others crawled by night to the houses and were hidden by the villagers; from them the details became known. Among those killed were the church elder, Cosmas Egorovich, and the peasants Victor Krasnov, Nahum and Philip (father and son), John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexei, John and Agatha.

The next day the peasants went to fetch the dead, and the priest's body was stiff, with hands raised in the last prayer and fingers joined for blessing. When he was carried through the village, the peasants said: "The father blesses us even dead". The priests of neighbouring parishes, Paul Maltsev and Maxim, performed the funeral and buried him at night. Saint Cosmas is commemorated on 11 November, 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.