German Ryashentsev

Saint German Ryashentsev, hieromartyr (born Nikolai Stepanovich Ryashentsev, 1883 to 15 September 1937), was bishop of Vyazniki, vicar of the diocese of Vladimir, brother of Archbishop Varlaam (Ryashentsev). He was shot at Syktyvkar in 1937. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided on 6 October 2001 to enter his name in the Synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of Russia. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 2 September.

Monk and teacher

He was born at Tambov, into a merchant family, finished the gymnasium at Tambov and in 1906 the Theological Academy at Kazan, with the title of candidate of theology. In 1903 he was tonsured a monk, and in 1905 ordained hieromonk. From 1906 he taught at the seminary in Pskov, from 1907 he was inspector there, from 1910 inspector at the seminary of Bethany, and from 1912 rector of that seminary, archimandrite, in whose time a major repair of the building was made. In 1915 and 1917 he was preacher in the active army. From 1918, after the closing of the seminary, he lived at the monastery of Saint Daniel in Moscow, where he composed, with Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky), the akathist to the pious Prince Daniel of Moscow.

The bishop

On 14 September 1919 he was consecrated bishop of Volokolamsk, vicar of Moscow. On 19 February 1921 he was arrested for sermons and released on 14 September, without the right to leave Moscow. In July 1922 he was arrested again, held at Butyrka and in July 1923 sentenced to three years of exile in West Siberia, where he stayed at Samarovo and in the villages of Chuchelinskiye Yurty. In August 1925 he was released and returned to Moscow. On 30 November 1925 he was arrested, with other bishops, on the charge of having formed an illegal Synod beside the locum tenens of the patriarch, Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky), held in the inner prison of the political police, and on 21 May 1926 sentenced to two years of exile in Central Asia (Turtkul, then Khodzheyli), released in January 1928. From 26 June 1928 he was bishop of Vyazniki, vicar of the diocese of Vladimir. In October 1928 the parishioners of the Kazan cathedral at Vyazniki resisted the closing of the church, and on 14 December Bishop German was arrested in the "case of the group of Vyazniki churchmen"; on 17 May 1929 he was sentenced to three years in a camp and was in the Kem camp, then from 1930 at Solovki, where he fell gravely ill with typhus. At the end of 1930 he was taken out of the camp with other sick, and, from 1931, was in exile near Kotlas, at Veliky Ustyug and in the villages of the north, until February 1933.

In 1933 to 1934 he lived at Arzamas, where in March 1934 he was arrested with Bishop Serapion of Arzamas, after the faithful prevented the renovationists from seizing the Nativity church. In May 1934 he was sentenced to three years of exile, served at the station of Oparino, then in the village of Kochpon near Syktyvkar, where, under his guidance, a community of exiled clergy and laity formed who helped those in need, above all those in camps. He organized a circle of lovers of church singing at the village church. His letters from exile survive; in one he wrote that many of us are perhaps destined to be atoning sacrifices and that we must think not of being able to live in some city but of the city to come, where all that is earthly, with all its sorrows, is only a road and a door.

The last arrest

On 23 February 1937 he was arrested at Syktyvkar, accused of having organized a "counter-⁠revolutionary group, the Holy Brotherhood". On 13 September 1937 he was sentenced to death, and on 15 September he was shot. His name had been put on a working list of new martyrs when the canonization of the Russian Church Outside Russia in 1981 was being prepared, without the date of death, a list printed only in the 1990s. On 6 October 2001 the Holy Synod decided to enter his name in the Synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of Russia.