Hilarion (Kiprian Ryzhenkov)

Hilarion (Kiprian Ryzhenkov) is how the Russian Athonite sources name two schemaarchdeacons of St Panteleimon Monastery, Hilarion and Kiprian Ryzhenkov. They are two different people; we present both here, venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

The schemaarchdeacon Hilarion was born in 1810 in the village of Platamonos, diocese of Thessaloniki, the son of George. A man of learning and spiritual depth, he was raised under the eye of Patriarch Athanasius of Jerusalem. He fled the patriarch's court after a childhood punishment and found shelter at Thessaloniki with Metropolitan Meletios, who ordained him hierodeacon. Life in the world troubled him, so in 1837 he fled secretly to Athos, to the Russian monastery, and received the schema. The metropolitan sought him out and threatened the monastery, but Hilarion remained. He was a friend of the Russians, a close helper of the abbots Gerasim and Macarius and of the confessor Hieronymus, and played a decisive part in calming the Greek-⁠Russian dispute of 1874-1875. St Mitrophan of Voronezh visited him in a dream. He reposed on 30 June 1886.

The schemaarchdeacon Kiprian Ryzhenkov, named Kodrat Grigorievich in the world, was born in 1860 in a peasant family in Kursk province. At fifteen he left secretly, mostly on foot, for Odessa and from there for Athos, in 1875. He was tonsured a rassophore with the name Kiprian on 29 March 1876, worked at Rossikon, was deacon from 1894 and archdeacon from 1912, and was the chief deacon at the festal services. Unable to bear the division among the brethren in the Name-⁠glorifier dispute, he went to Russia for a time and returned in 1913. He reposed on 20 November 1936, aged 76, of which sixty were spent within the monastery walls.