Herodion of Kostroma

Holy Venerable Martyr Herodion of Kostroma was a monk of the Epiphany monastery in Kostroma, killed in 1608, in the Time of Troubles, together with his brethren. He is commemorated on 5 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Kostroma metropolis, in new style.

The monastery had been founded in the fifteenth century by Venerable Nikita of Kostroma, disciple and kinsman of Saint Sergius of Radonezh. In the autumn of 1608 the partisans of the Second False Dmitry, "the thief of Tushino", defeated the government armies, and Kostroma, like many other towns, chose to swear allegiance to him, hoping to escape plunder. The violence of the foreigners, however, brought an uprising, and in Kostroma the new authority was overthrown. Punitive bands, with two thousand Cossacks and 608 mercenaries, set out against the city and took Kostroma on 28 December (old style) 1608.

The monks of the Epiphany monastery stood against them. On 30 December (old style) the monastery was taken by force and plundered, and its defenders died as martyrs. The monastery's memorial book names among the slain the monk Herodion, alongside the hieromonks Tryphillius, Macarius and Sabbatius, the hierodeacon Anfinogen and the monks Barlaam, Dionysius, Job, Simeon, Cyril, Maximus, Joasaph and Gurias, with three servants, five female servants and thirty-⁠four peasants of the monastery. The monastery, closed in the twentieth century, was revived from 1990, and since 5 March 2004, when Patriarch Alexy II approved the list of the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma, its defenders have been venerated as saints of the region.