Ignatius Biryukov

Holy Confessor Ignatius Biryukov (1865-1932), an archimandrite, was abbot of the Dormition monastery at Valuyki, Voronezh province. After the monastery was closed, in 1924, he moved to Voronezh. He was arrested in 1930 on a charge of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, sentenced to ten years in a camp, later changed to exile in the Northern Region. He reposed in exile on 27 September 1932, on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Childhood and calling

In the world he was named Ioann Adrianovich Biryukov. He was born on 25 May 1865 in the town of Biryuch, Voronezh province, in the peasant family of Adrian Pavlovich and Ekaterina Nikolaevna Biryukov. His father, besides peasant work, knew the blacksmith's trade well. Ioann studied at the town school in Biryuch, sang in the choir and came to love church singing. The choir of the Dormition church was directed by his elder brother Mikhail, and Ioann and four more brothers sang in it. By nature he was a mischievous boy, but church singing and the reading of church books, especially the lives of the saints, drew him toward the thought of monasticism. His mother, who doted on him, asked him not to go far, but to go to the Valuyki monastery, nearest to Biryuch.

On 9 October 1878, when he was thirteen, his parents, after praying, blessed him to enter the monastery. The abbot, Archimandrite Ignatius (Alexeevsky), took him as his cell attendant and gave him an obedience in the choir. The abbot and brethren came to love him for his meek conduct and for his skill in singing and reading, and when the choir director died, Ioann was blessed to direct the monastery choir. The monastery had a school for orphan children, whom it clothed, fed and taught free of charge, and the children sang in the monastery choir. Ioann studied the theory of music and played the violin and the harmonium; in 1888 he published the dogmatika of the eight tones in znamenny chant. With zeal beyond measure in the obedience of choir director, he fell ill with tuberculosis. On the doctor's advice, the abbot gave him a seven-⁠month leave, to be spent on pilgrimage to the holy places.

The pilgrimage

In January 1894 he went to Kiev, then with other pilgrims from Odessa by steamer toward the Holy Land, with stops at Constantinople, where the church of Hagia Sophia astonished him, at Piraeus, Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut. At Jerusalem he arrived on 22 February, bowed at the Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha and received the blessing of Patriarch Gerasimus. With a caravan of about four hundred Russian pilgrims he travelled in three weeks through the holy places: Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, the Jordan, Nazareth, Tabor, Cana of Galilee and others. He spent Holy Week in Jerusalem, received communion on Great Thursday and met the great feast of Pascha in the Greek church of the Resurrection, served by the Patriarch; he came away with a feeling of gratitude to God and an unspeakable spiritual consolation. Then he spent three months on Athos, in the Russian monasteries, where he sang and copied music, and escaped with his life from a storm at sea. He returned to Russia on 5 August, passed by the Pochaev Lavra and the Kyiv Caves Lavra and came to Valuyki healthy and full of strength. The abbot freed him from the choir obedience, so that he should not ruin his health again.

Monk, abbot and confessor

On 20 December 1897 he was tonsured a monk with the name Ignatius. In 1898 he was ordained hierodeacon, and two years later hieromonk by Bishop Anastasius of Voronezh. In 1900 he became assistant to the abbot. At the death of Archimandrite Ignatius in 1912 the brethren elected him abbot, and the diocesan authorities confirmed the election. The monastery, founded in 1615, had about a hundred brethren, three churches, workshops, mills, gardens, an apiary, an infirmary and a strict rule: matins began at three in the morning, and all the brethren, the abbot included, worked for the common good. In the First World War he took under the monastery's care the families of men gone to the front and received the wounded in the monastery guest houses, with free meals.

In March 1918 the Bolsheviks demanded from the monastery eight hundred thousand rubles and from the brethren ten thousand. Archimandrite Ignatius called the brethren and told them, in the words of Scripture, that every soul should be subject to the governing authorities, and handed over to the executive committee all the cash, ten thousand one hundred and five rubles, in the presence of the representative of the authorities. The attacks did not cease: three days later a band of thirty armed men burst into the monastery in the evening, searching for weapons and gold. They ransacked the cells and brought the abbot into the cathedral, where, with two revolvers at his head, they demanded that he say where the monastery's gold was. There had never been gold in the monastery. They fired over his head, led him out stripped onto the porch in the frost and left at night with the fifty-⁠two rubles of a novice.

In 1924 the authorities closed the monastery. Father Ignatius went to Biryuch, then, in 1926, to Voronezh, where Archbishop Peter (Zverev) put him in charge of the popular church choir. In summer 1929 he made a last journey to the places of his life: Zadonsk, Valuyki, where he prayed long at the walls of the monastery, and Kiev. At the beginning of 1930 the OGPU opened an investigation against the Voronezh clergy and Archimandrite Ignatius was arrested. He met Pascha of 1930 in prison, in the same cell with priests, monks and laymen, among them Archpriest Alexander Arkhangelsky; from Great Thursday they held services morning and evening, from memory and the few books they had, with a towel for an epitrachelion; on Great Saturday they received from outside a brocade epitrachelion and served the blessing of water, blessed the Easter breads, read the Acts of the Apostles and at midnight sang Christ is risen. On Sunday the whole cell received communion.

Archimandrite Ignatius was accused of being the actual leader of monasticism in the Central Black Earth region, through which he allegedly carried on anti-⁠collective-⁠farm and anti-⁠Soviet agitation. He did not admit guilt. On 28 July 1930 the OGPU collegium sentenced him to ten years in a camp, and a year later the sentence was changed to exile in the Northern Region for the remainder of the term. He was sixty-⁠six. The conditions of exile proved beyond the strength of the gravely ill archimandrite, and after a year and a half, on 27 September 1932, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Venerable Confessor Ignatius reposed.

He is commemorated on 28 September, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 17 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Voronezh Metropolis (new style, the second being a movable day).