David of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr David of Valaam was a monk of the Valaam Monastery and received a martyr's death on 20 February 1578, together with thirty-⁠three other brothers, killed by the Swedes. They are commemorated on 5 March, on 3 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, and on 22 August, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam. They were numbered among the saints of the Russian Church, for veneration in the whole Church, at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000.

In its long history the Valaam Monastery, located near the border of the lands of Great Novgorod with Sweden, was several times plundered by the Swedes. Under King Gustav Vasa (1523-1560) the Reformation was carried out in Sweden. In the time of his son John III, a band of soldiers recently converted to Lutheranism, who, in the words of Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, still burned with a fanatical attachment to their newly born faith, pursuing the Orthodox Karelians, crossed on the ice from the mainland to the island and attacked the monastery. On 20 February 1578, eighteen blessed elders and sixteen novices were killed as martyrs for their steadfastness in the Orthodox faith. Their names, with the note killed by Germans on Valaam, elders and servants, were entered in a synodikon that later came to the Vasilyevsky Monastery: the hieromonk Titus, the schemamonk Tikhon, the monks Gelasius, Sergius, Varlaam, Sava, Conon, Silvester, Cyprian, Pimen, John, Samon, Jonah, David, Cornelius, Nifont, Athanasius, Serapion, another Varlaam, the novices Athanasius, Anthony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Philip, Ignatius, Basil, Pachomius, another Basil, Theophilus, John, Theodore and another John. The attacks of the Swedes continued. On Valaam there is no stone that has not been sealed with the blood of ascetics.

In the nineteenth century a monk of Valaam, near the hermitage of Abbot Nazarius, was found worthy of a vision of unknown monks. They walked in two rows from a green grove bathed in sunlight and sang, in the old znamenny chant, the prayers for the dead. They had their hands crossed on their breasts, their faces bright and their eyes full of unspeakable meekness. When the line drew near the monk, he saw that all the monks were splashed with blood and covered with wounds. Where they had passed, the grass was not trodden. They vanished as they had come, into the thicket, and faint echoes of the funeral chant lingered long in the air. With the blessing of Abbot Damaskin, on the day of the martyrdom of the thirty-⁠four monks, 20 February (4 March by the new calendar), the Divine Liturgy for their eternal rest is served each year at Valaam, followed by a common memorial service.