Job of Maniava

Venerable Job of Manyava (in the world Ivan Knyahynytskyi, about 1550-1621, in monastic life Ezekiel) was a schemamonk and a man of Church and learning, founder of the Manyava Skete in the Carpathians of Ukraine, friend of the defenders of Orthodoxy in the time of the imposition of the Union. He died on 30 December 1621. He was canonized in 1994 as a local saint by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), and on 15 July 2004 by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 29 December, and together with Venerable Theodosius on 24 June (7 July).

Life

Few data about him are preserved. He was born at Tysmenytsia, in today's Ivano-⁠Frankivsk region. He studied at the monastery school at Univ and at Ostroh and for a time taught at the school of Ostroh, called by the nobleman Konstanty Vasyl Ostrogski. In youth he went twice to Athos. After meeting at Ostroh an Athonite monk who made a great impression on him, he left for Athos and lived long in a monastery there, where he was tonsured with the name Ezekiel. In 1598 he came to Ukraine with other Athonite monks to collect alms, and in 1600-1601 he returned, this time staying to strengthen monastic life. He reorganized several Orthodox monasteries.

In 1606 he settled near Krasnopol, at the foot of the Carpathians, and other monks soon gathered. Not being a priest himself, he sought a monk to serve. The lot fell on the deacon Theodosius, his nephew. After ordination as hieromonk, Theodosius was the first abbot of the skete. Introducing him, Job told him to be shepherd and teacher of the flock gathered by God and its confessor, that he was worthy to be abbot, and that he himself would help him as long as he lived. In 1606 (according to another date, 1611) he founded the Manyava Skete near the village of Manyava. He had friendships with Ivan Vyshensky, with Zakhariya Kopystensky and other men of the Church, and people turned to him in questions of purity of faith; his letter to Hieromonk Cyril Tranquillion is known, a criticism of the Confession of Faith composed by the latter, of 23 August 1619. Earlier, between 1593 and 1596, he probably wrote at Ostroh the Short Notice on the Latin Delusions.

At the end of 1621 he fell ill, aged seventy, and died on 29 or 30 December 1621. He was buried in the porch of the monastery church. Metropolitan Peter Mohyla wrote ten years after Theodosius's death that whoever goes to Pokuttya, to the skete, will find two hundred angels living in the body. His life was written by Ignatius of Lyubarov between 1623 and 1628. The monastery was closed by the Austrian authorities on 1 July 1785 and was re-⁠established at the fall of Communism, in the 1990s.