Ignatius Yakimov

Holy Hieromartyr Ignatius Yakimov (1872-1918), a priest, was born on 24 January 1872 in the village of Moroz in the Nolinsk district of Vyatka province, in the family of the peasant Dmitry Yakimov. A zealous priest, he fought drunkenness, defended the peasants against the arbitrariness of the local authorities, and in 1917 spoke out against the unlawful seizure of land and forest, for which he was slandered. After reading Bishop Andronik's epistle on the defence of churches he was accused of counter-⁠revolution and was shot by the Bolsheviks on 24 July 1918.

After finishing the Nolinsk theological school in 1889, Ignatius entered the Slobodsk Exaltation of the Cross monastery as a novice, where he struggled about two years, then took the courses for psalmists of the Saint Stephen Brotherhood in Perm. In 1891 he was appointed psalmist at the church of Saint Demetrius in the village of Oshib, Solikamsk district, in 1894 moved to the Nativity church in the village of Ryabki, Osa district, and in 1896 to the Epiphany church in the village of Yurlinskoe, Cherdyn district. On 6 June 1899 he was ordained deacon at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Kochevskoe and appointed teacher of religion and singing at the literacy school in Kukushkino. At that time the vice of drunkenness was spreading ever more among the people, and the clergy had to enter first into the fight against it; so Deacon Ignatius became a district warden in the patronage for the people's sobriety in the Cherdyn district. On 2 November 1903 he was ordained priest at the Nativity church in the village of Churaki, Cherdyn district, and appointed teacher of religion at the Churaki zemstvo school and head of the Grishkino parish school. In 1913 he was appointed spiritual father of the district, in 1916 acting dean of the second district of churches of the Cherdyn district and soon dean.

After the tsar's abdication, disorder spread quickly in Russia. If even under lawful power many, using the confusion, enriched themselves to the detriment of the fatherland, of which Bishop Andronik wrote so bitterly, foreseeing grave consequences, now came the turn of these consequences, and all who had trampled their conscience gave themselves to plunder, for there was no fear of punishment in the absence of lawful power. The same was so in Churaki. The peasants began to seize allotments of land, regardless of the fact that many of their fellow villagers had not yet returned from the front, to cut the state forest openly; in the food committees and district administrations unworthy people were elected, who disposed of the provisions in their own interest. Father Ignatius spoke against the plundering of the state forests and defended the wronged peasants. He proposed to wait for the decision of the Constituent Assembly and only after it to decide the land question. Some peasants were pleased that he defended them, but most were displeased with the priest and reacted much as the Jews to Moses when he intervened for them: Who made you judge over us? They resolved to remove him from the village.

On 17 September 1917 a meeting of the peasants of the village of Churaki took place, at which about eighty people were present, and it was resolved to ask Bishop Andronik of Perm for another priest in place of Father Ignatius. The sentence was signed when most had already dispersed and only a little over ten remained, and for those who had not been at the meeting and for minors the chairman of the district administration signed, who afterward added a note that the general meeting of peasants demands that the priest be brought to trial for counter-⁠revolutionary activity. The sentence was sent to the Cherdyn soviet and to the diocesan bishop. Father Ignatius gave written explanations on this in October 1917. He showed that the troubles came from a few persons, first from the chairman of the meeting, Andrei Timofeev Fedoseev, and from the secretary, the teacher Semyon Petrov Fedoseev. The first had had two conscientious committee chairmen replaced and put in their place a deserter, a relative of his, who gave the rich two, three and four sacks of rye flour and the poor not more than one; the priest had exposed these wrongdoings, and the deserter had to return whence he came. The teacher Semyon had organised the cutting of the state forest and thus set a bad example; the priest reprimanded him before the people. In one word, the sentence to remove him from the parish arose on the initiative of his enemies, so that he should not trouble their conscience and because he urged the peasants not to cut the state forest and not to clear state land for ploughing until the land question was settled at the Constituent Assembly. To attain their aim, his enemies were not ashamed to put on the list people who had not been at the meeting and minors and to add the note with another hand a few days later. The soviet, not knowing the substance of the matter, called him in a paper to the bishop a counter-⁠revolutionary who corrupts his flock, therefore, in the interest of the people's peace, he must be removed and brought to trial. The district committee asked that he be moved to another parish also because he had said openly that he would not leave Churaki without a fight. To fight in the literal sense he could not, since he had neither gun, nor bombs, nor machine gun; he could give battle only by the word of truth against falsehood and by asking the parishioners, who would have to tell him they did not need him, and then he would go; but for the sake of three or four of his enemies he did not intend to leave the parish. On 20 November it would be fourteen years since he had served in this parish and he knew his rational sheep not only by sight but by voice. Had the conscience of his enemies been clean and the sentence drawn up rightly, they would have fulfilled his request of 18 September and given him a copy of the sentence of the 17th, as dean, to present to the diocesan authorities, but two months passed and the copy had not come.

After the Bolsheviks came to power and issued their decree on the separation of Church from state, which officially opened the cruel persecution of the Church, attacks on churches and monasteries began. On 25 January 1918 Bishop Andronik of Perm sent to all clergy and Orthodox parishioners, and to the monasteries of the Perm diocese an epistle, which Father Ignatius read at a village meeting in Churaki. In it the bishop wrote that an attack could be expected from brigands or various seizers of church or monastery property, as well as of the churches and monasteries themselves; the population must be prepared for such danger and called on oath to defend churches and monasteries from violent men, lest for their connivance they fall together with them under eternal condemnation from God; it must be warned that, in case of attack, the alarm bell would be rung, to which the Orthodox must hasten; and to the seizers the anathema written, like that of Ananias and Sapphira, be read; and all parishioners be told that, even if all permitted violence against a church or monastery, their church would be closed for services, and the guilty would be barred from Holy Communion; and if any took Holy Mysteries by deceiving the confessor, that communion would be to eternal condemnation, with Judas. Stand even unto death. After reading the epistle, Father Ignatius asked the parishioners not to leave him if anyone came to plunder the church, and, hearing the bell, to run to defend their holy shrine from defilement.

On 15 March 1918 the chairman of the Churaki executive committee, Semyon Fedoseev, sent to the investigating commission in Cherdyn a denunciation, accusing Father Ignatius of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and demanding immediate examination of the case. On 30 March the priest was summoned to interrogation. Answering the charges, he said: On my part there was no agitation against the Council of People's Commissars; I only read at the district administration the order of Bishop Andronik of Perm of 25 January 1918 and made no explanation, but only said that if there was any attack on the church I would ring the bell and read the seizers the bishop's order; I did not mention the Red Guards and did not call the people to reprisal. I am accused of sowing discord and enmity among the people. I can say the same as in the explanation given to the bishop of Perm. More than I have said I can add nothing, except that, as before I called the people to order, so now I call. I ask that a formal inquiry be made as to who was at the meeting of 17 September, for many are listed who were not there. The warden of the Nativity church at Churaki was called to the inquiry and said: I, the church warden, declare that the priest Father Ignatius Yakimov is a good man; in fourteen years we have seen and heard nothing bad of him. There was no outburst on his part. The accusation is brought because he stands up for us, the poor, and does not let us be wronged. At the same time the warden gave a guarantee for the priest, so that the authorities should not arrest him: I guarantee with my property that the priest Ignatius Dmitrievich Yakimov will not evade the court and will not permit counter-⁠revolutionary outbursts.

The priest was released from custody, and the formal investigation, on the basis of many testimonies, confirmed his innocence, but in the indictment the investigator kept only the false testimonies of the representatives of the Churaki administration. On 24 July 1918 the priest Ignatius Yakimov was arrested by a detachment of Bolshevik punishers who entered the village of Churaki, and was shot.

He is commemorated on 20 June, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 14 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis (new style, the last two being movable days).