Euphrosynus of Sinozersk

Saint Euphrosynus of Sinozersk, Venerable Martyr, was a Russian hermit, founder of the hermitage by Lake Sinichye in the Novgorod land, who was killed by Polish soldiers on 20 March 1612, during the Time of Troubles, having chosen to remain in his monastery. His relics were found incorrupt, and in 1913 he was glorified throughout the Russian Church. He is commemorated on 20 March (2 April in the New Style).

Life in the world

The main source for his life is the Life written in 1650 by the monk Jonah Filippov Surovtsyn of Sinozersk, with the blessing of the hermitage's second abbot, Moses, from the account of the peasant Yemelyan Sumin, whose father had witnessed the saint's martyrdom.

In the world he was named Ephraim and was born in the Karelian land, on the north-⁠western shore of Lake Ladoga; his father was called Simeon, and his mother's name has not survived. In his youth he lived at the Valaam Monastery, perhaps as a novice. In 1578 the monastery was captured and plundered by the Swedes, and it seems that Ephraim then moved to Novgorod. After some time he settled in the village of Dolosskoye in the Bezhetsk district, about twenty versts from Ustyuzhna, where he was a reader at the church of the Great Martyr George and Saint Nicholas, and lived there for a long time.

The hermit

He was tonsured a monk with the name Euphrosynus at the Dormition Monastery of Tikhvin, where he lived for a time. Then, with the abbot's blessing, he left to live in the wilderness, in the wild marshes near the river Chagodoshcha, on the shore of Lake Sinichye, some fifteen versts from Dolosskoye. He set up a cross and dug himself a cave, where he lived for two years, feeding only on what the forest gave: herbs, all kinds of mushrooms, cowberries, bird cherries, currants, bilberries, rowan berries and even the white moss of the pine woods.

Unexpectedly the people of the area found him and began coming to him for guidance, and some stayed to live with him. The life says that he went into the wilderness in 1600.

Founding the hermitage

In time many dwellers gathered at the “Old Hermitage”, and Euphrosynus founded a new monastery on the eastern shore of Lake Sinichye, not far from the old one. A charter of Tsar Michael Fyodorovich of 22 February 1636 says that the hermits Gury and Euphrosynus settled in the year 7100 (1591/1592) by Lake Sinichye, on the tsar's empty land, in wild forest, far in every direction from monasteries, churches and people. The former was Saint Gury of Shalochsk. According to tradition Saint Philaret of Unzha also laboured with them.

Martyrdom

In 1612, when Polish bands were plundering Russia, many people took refuge in Euphrosynus's hermitage. One day the saint said that the Poles were coming to the hermitage and advised everyone to flee. Many did not believe him and asked why he himself did not leave that holy place. The elder replied that for Christ's sake he had come to die in that place. Those who heeded him and left were saved, while almost all who stayed were killed.

The monk Jonah, who lived in the hermitage, believed the elder and wanted to flee with the laypeople, but the saint held him back. He told him not to let fear and faint-⁠heartedness into his soul, that when battle comes one must show courage, and that they had vowed before the Lord to live and die in the wilderness, and a word given to God must be kept.

Then he put on the schema and spent the whole night in prayer. The next day, 20 March, the Poles attacked the monastery. The saint came out of his cell in the schema and stood by the cross he had set up. The Poles rushed at him, demanding the monastery's wealth. He answered that all the wealth of the monastery and his own was in the church of the Most Pure Mother of God, meaning the riches that cannot be stolen, hidden in God. Not understanding him, the raiders ran to the church, and one of them struck the saint on the neck with his sword, and the elder fell dead. When the Poles returned, enraged at finding nothing in the church, the murderer split his head as well with a battle axe. The monk Jonah was also killed.

A devout peasant, John Suma, had also remained in the hermitage with the saint and was in his cell when the enemy burst in. Though gravely wounded, he survived; after the Poles had gone he came to himself and told his son, who had returned, what had happened. From them the people of the area learned of it. The saint's body was buried with honour on 28 March, on the same day as the monk Jonah and all those slain by the sword.

The relics

The monastery was restored in 1619. Thirty-⁠four years after the saint's death the builder Moses raised a new church of the Holy Trinity and a bell tower in the hermitage. On 25 August (4 September) 1653 the relics of Euphrosynus were found incorrupt and, with the blessing of Metropolitan Macarius of Novgorod, were placed by the builder Jonah beneath the new bell tower of the church of the Annunciation, with a tomb above them bearing a carved wooden image of the saint.

In 1799, with the blessing of Metropolitan Gabriel (Petrov), a new shrine was made with scenes of the saint's murder. Through an opening the coffin could be seen, covered with sand instead of a lid, sand that was held to be wonderworking; the opening was closed around 1900. In 1913, after the canonisation, a new bronze shrine was made.

Services were held in the church of the Trinity and the Annunciation until 1933. After its closure the shrine was taken to the museum in Ustyuzhna, where in 1936 the relics were opened and for a time displayed in an anti-⁠religious exhibition, and in 1954 the 1913 shrine was sold for scrap. On 14 June 1991 the relics were returned to the Church and now rest in the church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God in Ustyuzhna, in the chapel of Saint Antipas, in the shrine of 1799.

Veneration

By the middle of the seventeenth century two troparia and a kontakion had been composed for him, mentioning the incorruption of his relics. His veneration brought the monastery many gifts: in 1636 it received land along the Chagodoshcha, and Tsars Alexis Mikhailovich and Feodor Alekseyevich confirmed its holdings; Tsar Alexis also gave a bell. In the second half of the seventeenth century great noble families such as the Cherkassky, Volkonsky, Morozov, Naryshkin and Pushkin, as well as the tsar's confessors, made generous gifts.

In 1847 a priest of Dolosskoye, Euthymius, healed through the saint's prayers, composed a prayer to him. Pilgrims venerated the schema garment in which, according to tradition, he had suffered martyrdom, and an icon of the Annunciation that he was said to have placed in the church. The priest G. Yakovtsevsky published the Life in 1901 together with 27 miracles from the late eighteenth century to 1862, and later another 11 miracles from 1862 to 1912 were published, most of them healings from illness.

In 1904 his name was entered in the calendar of Russian saints published by the Synod. Following a new petition in 1911, the Synod numbered him in 1913 among the saints of the whole Russian Church. The celebration, presided over by Archbishop Arseny (Stadnitsky) of Novgorod, drew nearly 30,000 pilgrims, and Tsar Nicholas II sent a telegram of greeting. At the beginning of the twentieth century a brotherhood bearing his name existed in the diocese of Novgorod.

Although all the wooden churches of the hermitage burned in the twentieth century, pilgrimage has never ceased, and healings still occur at the holy well through his prayers; the museum of the Chagoda district, opened in 1994, keeps a record of these miracles. On 14 October 2001 a chapel was raised on the site of the Old Hermitage, and in 2019 an akathist was composed to him. He is commemorated on 20 March, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod (third Sunday after Pentecost) and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia (21 May).