Ignatius of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Ignatius of Valaam is numbered among the thirty-⁠four monks, eighteen elders and sixteen novices, killed at Valaam in 1578. In its long history the Valaam monastery, standing near the border of the holdings of Novgorod with Sweden, was repeatedly laid waste by the Swedes. Under King Gustav Vasa (1523-1560) the Reformation was carried out in Sweden. In the reign of his son John III a military band of newly converted Lutherans, who, in the words of Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov), still burned with a fanatical attachment to their newly born faith, pursuing the Orthodox Karelians, crossed on the ice from the mainland to the island and attacked the monastery. On 20 February 1578 eighteen blessed elders and sixteen novices were killed as martyrs for their steadfastness in the Orthodox faith.

Their names, with the note killed by Germans on Valaam, elders and servants, were entered in a synodikon which later came to the Vasilievsky monastery: the hieromonk Titus, the schemamonk Tikhon, the monks Gelasius, Sergius, Barlaam, Savva, Conon, Silvester, Cyprian, Pimen, John, Samon, Jonah, David, Cornelius, Niphon, Athanasius, Serapion, another Barlaam, the novices Athanasius, Anthony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Philip, Ignatius, Basil, Pachomius, another Basil, Theophilus, John, Theodore and another John. The Swedish attacks continued. On Valaam there is no stone that has not been sealed by the blood of ascetics.

In the nineteenth century a Valaam monk, near the hermitage of Hegumen Nazarius, was granted a vision of unknown monks: they walked in two rows out of a green grove flooded with sunlight and sang in the ancient znamenny chant funeral prayers. They walked with hands crossed on their breasts, radiant of face, with eyes of unspeakable gentleness. Only when the procession came near the monk did he see that all the monks were sprinkled with blood and covered with wounds. Where they had passed, the grass was not crushed. They vanished as they had appeared, in the green thicket, and faint echoes of the funeral song hung long in the air. With the blessing of Hegumen Damascene, on the day of the martyrdom of the thirty-⁠four monks, 20 February (4 March on the new style), the Divine Liturgy for their eternal rest was served each year at the Valaam monastery, with a memorial service in concelebration.

They were numbered among the saints of the Russian Church, for veneration in the whole Church, at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000. They are commemorated on 5 March (new style, a movable day), on 3 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, and on 22 August (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.