Herman of Valaam

Saint Herman of Valaam is regarded, together with Saint Sergius, as a founder of the Transfiguration Monastery on Valaam Island in Lake Ladoga. The Church honours them as enlighteners of the land of Karelia. Their lives are veiled in obscurity, and the age in which they lived is disputed.

Who they were

Early sources are lacking, and the oldest accounts come long after the events. The main source for Herman is the church service composed in honour of Sergius and himself. According to tradition the two came to Valaam "from the East", and the akathist calls them chosen branches of the "Greek cedar". They are said to have settled there in the time of idolatry, between 973 and 980, to have preached the Gospel to the local people and taught them to put away superstition and unclean customs and to fear God alone. They are said to have had the gift of foreseeing things present and to come.

According to tradition Herman was a priest and led the monastery after Sergius. Later scholars have moved their lives to the twelfth or the fourteenth century. A note in a collection of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Novgorod says the elder Sergius came to Valaam in 1329, and the official Russian Menaion gives them as departed around 1353. Historians today usually place the rise of the monastery toward the end of the fourteenth century, with a foundation between 1389 and 1393.

Relics and veneration

The monastery was devastated more than once by the Swedes, and the relics of the two saints were carried to Novgorod. From 1610 until 1721, when they returned to Valaam, they lay at the monastery in Staraya Ladoga. The day on which the relics were brought back from Novgorod to Valaam, once the danger of a Swedish attack had passed, is kept on 11 September.

The two were venerated at Valaam from ancient times, but their veneration throughout the whole Church began under Metropolitans Gabriel (1770-1799) and Ambrose (1799-1818) of Saint Petersburg, who asked for their names to be entered in the service books. The Orthodox Church of Finland honours them as saints and enlighteners of Karelia. They are commemorated on 28 June.