Hermogenes of Moscow

Saint Hermogenes, hieromartyr, was patriarch of Moscow and all Russia from 1606 and a defender of the Orthodox faith in the Time of Troubles, when Russia was torn by usurpers and Polish occupation. Earlier, as metropolitan, he had been the first shepherd of Kazan. He died of hunger in prison in 1612, after blessing the army of liberation. The Russian Church glorified him in 1913 and commemorates him on 17 February and 12 May.

Beginnings and Kazan

He was born around 1530. His origin is disputed: some say he came from the Shuisky or Golitsyn families, others that he was of humble birth. As a teenager he went to Kazan, where he entered the Transfiguration Monastery. The first sure news of him is from the 1570s, when he was a priest at Kazan; in the next decade he served at the church of St Nicholas in the merchants' quarter. Contemporaries called him a man adorned with great wisdom and pure of life. In 1579 the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God of Kazan appeared, and the priest Yermolai, with the blessing of Bishop Jeremiah, carried the icon from the place of its finding to his church. After the death of his wife, in 1587, he became a monk at the Chudov Monastery in Moscow.

From 1582 he was archimandrite of the Transfiguration Monastery in Kazan, and on 13 May 1589 he was consecrated bishop and became the first metropolitan of Kazan. He wrote to Patriarch Job asking that the Orthodox soldiers who fell at Kazan be commemorated in an ordered way, and asked that three Kazan martyrs be remembered: the Russian John and two baptized Tatars, Stephen and Peter. He devoted himself to the Christianization of the Tatars of Kazan. Around 1594, when the stone church was built at the place where the icon appeared, he wrote the Tale and Miracles of the Most Pure Mother of God, and in 1595 he took part in the finding of the relics of Saints Gurias and Barsanuphius, whose Life he composed.

Patriarch in the Time of Troubles

Summoned to Moscow by False Dmitry I, he opposed the election of Ignatius as patriarch and demanded Orthodox baptism for Marina Mniszech. He was to be sent into exile at Kazan, but there was no time, because False Dmitry was killed. Tsar Vasily Shuisky, who overthrew False Dmitry and deposed Ignatius, made Hermogenes patriarch on 3 July 1606. He supported the tsar in suppressing the revolt of Bolotnikov, whom he anathematized.

When Vasily was removed and the Poles took the Kremlin, Hermogenes opposed the plan to crown Wladyslaw, son of the king of Poland, unless he accepted Orthodoxy. Although some boyars threatened him with knives, he refused to sign the petitions to the king and prevented Wladyslaw from receiving the crown. In December 1610 he sent letters to the Russian towns urging the people to rise against the Poles. When the volunteer army of Prokopy Lyapunov approached Moscow, he would not anathematize it, although he was asked to do so under threat of death. He was arrested and imprisoned in the Chudov Monastery. There he heard of the new army gathered by Kuzma Minin and led by Prince Pozharsky and blessed them both. Then he was tortured and left to die of hunger, on 17 February 1612.

Relics and veneration

His body was buried at the Chudov Monastery and in 1654 was moved to the Dormition cathedral in Moscow. His relics were found by chance in 1913, in a crypt of the Chudov Monastery, during repairs. In connection with the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty, he was glorified that same year as a holy hierarch and martyr and moved to the Dormition cathedral. Out of his care for worship, under his patriarchate Gospels, Menaia for September, October and November, and the Great Typikon were printed, in 1610, and at his blessing the service of the Holy Apostle Andrew was translated from the Greek.