Ignatius Lebedev

Holy Venerable Martyr Ignatius (in the world Alexander Alexandrovich Lebedev) was a schema-⁠archimandrite of the Russian Church. He was born on 28 May 1884 in the town of Chukhloma, Kostroma province, and died on 11 September 1938 in a corrective labour colony near the town of Alatyr, in the Chuvash ASSR. He was numbered among the saints in the year 2000, for veneration throughout the Church, by decision of the Holy Synod of 27 December 2000. His commemoration is on 30 August (12 September by the new calendar) and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

He was born into the family of Alexander Konstantinovich Lebedev, a hereditary honorary citizen. In 1903 he graduated from the Soligalich clerical school and the Kostroma seminary. He then entered the Kazan Veterinary Institute. At that time a great influence on him was his contact with Venerable Gabriel of Sedmiezernaya (Zyryanov), who blessed him on the monastic path. In 1908, after finishing the veterinary institute, Lebedev entered as a novice the Zosima Hermitage in Vladimir province. In March 1915 he was tonsured to the mantle with the name Agathon. Soon after the tonsure he fell ill with an infectious disease, which gave a complication of parkinsonism.

In 1918 he was ordained hierodeacon by Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky). In 1920 he was ordained hieromonk by Patriarch Tikhon, in the church of the Holy Trinity of the Patriarchal metochion in Moscow. After the closing of the Zosima Hermitage, with the blessing of the elder Hieroschemamonk Alexis (Solovyov), he moved to Moscow and settled at the Vysoko-⁠Petrovsky Monastery, of which he was appointed deputy superior in 1924 and raised to the rank of archimandrite. Ignatius (Lebedev) is depicted by Pavel Korin in the painting Russia Departing (to the left of the ambo, in schema vestments).

Venerable Martyr Ignatius died on 11 September 1938 in a corrective labour colony near the town of Alatyr in the Chuvash ASSR.