Job of Ushchelye

Venerable Martyr Job of Ushchelye was a monk of Solovki and then the first builder of Job Monastery at Ushchelye, on the river Mezen in northern Russia. He received the crown of martyrdom in 1628, killed by robbers. He is commemorated on 5 August by the old calendar, that is 18 August, and on 9 (22) August in the Synaxis of the Solovki Saints.

Very little is known of his earthly life. He is said only to have borne the surname Mozovsky or Mazovsky and to have had a father named Patrikios. An old chronicle of unknown authorship says that the place of his birth was hidden by God, so that we might know that the saints seek the heavenly homeland and do not boast of earthly descent.

It is not known when he came to the Solovki monastery, but a letter of blessing survives from Isidore, then abbot of Solovki and later metropolitan of Novgorod. It shows that on 10 November 1608 Job was ordained hieromonk for the church of the Transfiguration in the great monastery of Saints Zosima and Sabbatius. He then lived about six years among the brethren there.

In 1614 he left for the east, to the shore of the White Sea and the river Mezen, and at a place called Ushchelye, near the village of Leshukonskoe, he found a site suitable and even beautiful for a monastery. He built a chapel of the Nativity of Christ and the first novices began to come to him. The community was extremely poor. Only after Tsar Michael Fyodorovich granted it land with fishing waters could Job build the church and cells. The land register of the Mezen district for 1623 records the monastery as founded in 1614, with a wooden church of the Nativity of Christ newly built in 1622, with Job as its builder and eight elder monks in four cells, exempt from taxes because it was newly built. The chronicle says that he set the monastery in order with God's help, living with the brethren in fasting and prayer and supporting himself by the labour of his hands.

On 5 (18) August 1628, while the brethren were at the haymaking, only Job was left in the monastery, since because of old age he could no longer do much work. Robbers burst into the church, thinking that great riches were hidden there, and tortured him cruelly. They did not know that he, like all the saints of God, had laid up his treasure in heaven. Failing to learn anything, they beheaded him, and the novices found his body in this state. His relics were glorified by miracles. A Ukrainian source gives the day of commemoration as 18 August.