Joannicius Dmitriev

Venerable martyr Joannicius Dmitriev (born Ivan Alexeevich Dmitriev, 1875 to 23 November 1937) was an archimandrite of the Russian Orthodox Church, a former tailor, a monk at Optina, abbot of the Saint George monastery at Meshchovsk and a priest at Kaluga, shot in the Kaluga region. He was numbered in August 2000 among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, as a venerable martyr, by the Jubilee Council of Bishops, for veneration in the whole Church. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 10 November and on 29 January.

Beginnings

He was born in 1875 in the village of Redkie Dvory (in the Tula province according to the source, in another place the Moscow province), into a peasant family, with four brothers and sisters. For three years he learned to read at home, from the village teacher, and for the rest he did farm work, in summer as a shepherd. At twelve he went for three years from village to village with a band of tailors, learning the trade. He went to church almost daily and read many spiritual books. At seventeen he went to Moscow and took a job in a tailor's workshop. At twenty his mother died and he took on the support of the family: his father and four brothers and sisters.

The monk

In 1908, at thirty-⁠three, he came to Optina Pustyn and stayed there two weeks, talking often with the abbot, who then received him as a novice. Later he was tonsured a monk with the name Joannicius. From 1917 he was steward of the bishop's house of Bishop Theophan (Tulyakov) of Kaluga. In 1918 he was mobilized for two years into the rear militia. In 1921 he was ordained hieromonk by Bishop Theophan and served in the village of Sukhinichi, near Kaluga. In 1928 he was raised to hegumen and appointed rector of the Saint George monastery at Meshchovsk.

The first arrest

In 1929 the monastery was closed and the commune "Iskra" was made in its place. Father Joannicius was appointed rector of the cathedral at Meshchovsk, and the monastics, living after the closing of the monastery in private homes, formed around the cathedral a kind of monastic community, holding the services according to the typikon. This drew the attention of the authorities and in September 1932 nineteen people of Meshchovsk were arrested, among them eleven monks and nuns, accused of forming a counter-⁠revolutionary group and of agitation against collectivization. Hegumen Joannicius was arrested on 31 October and imprisoned at Bryansk. On 16 November he answered the investigator: "I do not admit guilt in the charge of having formed a counter-⁠revolutionary group. The church service was long, though some monastic prayers were shortened. The akathists were read at the beginning and then sung during the service, but this was the custom before me. The services were held daily. I did this out of care for the true Christian faith, as every priest should. There was no hidden monastery at the cathedral at Meshchovsk. All the monastics regarded me as their spiritual father, but not as the eldest." On 15 March 1933 the troika of the political police nevertheless sentenced him to a fairly light punishment: five years of exile in the Northern Territory. On his return he was raised to archimandrite and sent to serve at the church of Saint Nicholas in Kazino, in Kaluga.

The second arrest and martyrdom

In the autumn of 1937 the NKVD arrested him again, together with Archbishop Augustine and a group of clergy of Kaluga. On 28 October, at interrogation, he testified that among the clergy and the faithful he had expressed discontent with the Soviet government, accusing it that by its policy the churches had been closed throughout the Soviet Union, and that it unjustly persecuted "former people" and the clergy. Yet he did not admit guilt of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and refused to denounce others. On 19 November 1937 a special troika of the NKVD sentenced him to death, together with Archbishop Augustine (Belyaev), Archpriest John Speransky, the psalm readers Alexei Gorbachev and Apollon Babichev and the member of the parish council Mikhail Arefiev. The sentence was carried out on 23 November 1937, and those shot were buried in an unknown common grave.