Euthymius of Suzdal

Saint Euthymius of Suzdal (1316 - 1 April 1404) was the founder and archimandrite of the monastery of the Saviour and Saint Euthymius at Suzdal. He was canonized by the second council of Moscow of 1549, among the venerable. He is commemorated on 1 April (14 April by the new calendar) and on 4 July (17 July by the new calendar).

Life

He was born at Nizhny Novgorod and in youth received monastic tonsure from Dionysius of Suzdal in the Caves monastery of Nizhny Novgorod, where he led a strict life. In 1352, at the request of Prince Boris Konstantinovich of Suzdal, he was sent to him to build a new monastery at Suzdal. On the way he founded a church dedicated to Saint Basil the Great. The monastery was founded in the northern part of the city, beyond the river Kamenka, and Euthymius was its archimandrite. Already in his lifetime nearly three hundred monks lived in it, following the strict communal rule established by him. He had contact with Sergius of Radonezh and often visited his monastery of the Trinity. He gave himself to ascetic labor. On the other bank of the Kamenka he founded, at the wish of Prince Andrei Konstantinovich and Bishop John, the Protection of the Mother of God convent. He reposed on 1 April 1404 and was buried in the coffin he had prepared himself.

Veneration and relics

On 4 July 1507, when ditches were being dug for the building of the monastery's new cathedral, the relics of Euthymius were found, declared incorrupt. In 1511 a side chapel in memory of Saint Euthymius was made beside the renewed Saviour church, where the shrine with his relics was placed. On 22 February 1657 the shrine was moved into the cathedral. The relics were regarded as wonderworking.

The fate of the relics in the twentieth and twenty-⁠first centuries

On 12 February 1919 the saint's tomb was opened. The result of the examination, in the report of the VIII department of the People's Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR to the Congress of Soviets, was described thus: "a heap of bones rotted and crumbling with time". In May 1922 the relics were removed from the monastery. They became an exhibit of the anti-⁠religious department of the museum, and from the mid-1940s were kept in the museum's stores. On 9 June 1988 the Vladimir museum-⁠reserve gave the relics of Euthymius to the only church then open in Suzdal, the church of Saints Constantine and Helena. In 1990 that church, with the relics in it, passed to the Russian Church Outside of Russia, and then to the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC), a body separate from the Russian Orthodox Church.

In 2009 the territorial office of the Agency for Federal Property Management brought suit to take 13 properties from ROAC, among them the church of Tsar Constantine. The arbitration court of the Vladimir region granted the suit, but ROAC clergy placed the relics of the saints in their Iveron synodal church and refused to give them to the state. On 16 February 2012 the head of the Agency's territorial office for the Vladimir region, Vladimir Gorlanov, filed in court a claim stating that the relics of Saints Euthymius and Euphrosyne of Suzdal "are the property of the Russian Federation and are cultural objects". On 31 May 2012 the court decided that the relics be given to the Agency, and ROAC was fined for failing to carry out the decision. On 24 January 2013 the federal arbitration court of the Volga-⁠Vyatka district annulled the earlier decisions and left the relics with ROAC. On 30 August 2013, however, bailiffs entered the Iveron church during a service and tried to take them. The Agency had to prove its rights again in the courts of general jurisdiction, which also found them to belong to the state. On 3 July 2014 the Constitutional Court of Russia rejected the complaint of the head of ROAC, Metropolitan Theodore (Gineevsky), against the removal of the relics of Euthymius and Euphrosyne of Suzdal; the decision was published on 16 July.

On 25 March 2015 officers of the Federal Bailiff Service took the relics by force from the ROAC faithful in the Iveron church in Suzdal. ROAC parishioners and priests tried to prevent the shrines from being carried out, but after a small scuffle the bailiffs succeeded. In mid-⁠April 2015 the relics of Euphrosyne were placed in a special shrine in the Deposition of the Robe cathedral in the Deposition of the Robe convent of the Russian Orthodox Church in Suzdal. The relics of Euthymius were placed then in the Ascension cathedral of the Alexandrov monastery in Suzdal. On 10 October 2015 the relics of Euthymius were returned to the Transfiguration cathedral of the monastery of the Saviour and Saint Euthymius.