John Artobolevsky

Saint John Artobolevsky (1872-1938), hieromartyr, was an archpriest in Moscow, a master of theology, a professor and preacher, who was arrested several times and shot at the Butovo firing range on 17 February 1938. He was numbered among the New Martyrs of Russia in 2000, and his day of commemoration is 17 February.

Family and studies

He was born in 1872 in the village of Prokazna in the Mokshan district of Penza province, in the family of the priest Alexei Semyonovich Artobolevsky, rector of the church of Saint Mitrophan in Penza, and Elizaveta Ivanovna. His brothers were Vladimir, an archpriest, and Sergius, the last rector of the Vitebsk seminary, whose five children he later took into his care. He finished the church school (1886) and the Penza seminary (1891), then the Moscow Theological Academy (1895), as a candidate of theology in 1896. In 1899 he received the degree of master of theology for his work The First Journey of the Holy Apostle Paul Preaching the Gospel, in which he gathered all that was then known about the countries and cities the apostle visited and analysed the principal passages of the Acts of the Apostles.

Professor and priest

He was assistant secretary of the council of the Theological Academy and of the Alexandro-⁠Mariinsky almshouse in Sergiev Posad, teacher of geography at the Filaret girls' school, and then from 1896 to 1905 teacher of Holy Scripture and Hebrew at the Bethany seminary. On 6 July 1905 he was ordained priest, teacher of religion and rector of the church of Saint Mary Magdalene at the Moscow commercial school. From 1907 he was rector of the church of Saint Alexander Nevsky, and from 1911 to 1918 professor of theology at the Moscow Agricultural Institute, elected despite the opposition of the minister Kasso, who thought him a liberal. At the same time, until 1924, he served at the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Petrovsko-⁠Razumovskoe, where he was raised to archpriest in 1919. In 1917 he was a delegate to the Local Council, a member of several departments. In 1924 he received the mitre, joined the Supreme Church Council beside Patriarch Tikhon and became rector of the church of the Entrance into the Temple in Cherkizovo. In 1931 he was dismissed from service because of illness and lived on his children's support.

Arrests

On the night of 16 to 17 August 1922 he was arrested and held in the GPU's internal prison, accused of organizing circles of Christian youth at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy and of using his priestly position for counter-⁠revolutionary agitation in sermons. He was then arrested again because, at the time of the confiscation of church valuables, he had read from the ambo the letter of Patriarch Tikhon calling for resistance. At the trial in November-⁠December 1922 he did not admit guilt and was sentenced to three years, but on 17 January 1923 he was freed by amnesty. In 1933 he was arrested again and held in Butyrka, accused over the same circles of the early 1920s, and sentenced to three years of exile at Vologda, but was released after a few days.

Martyrdom

He was arrested on 22 January 1938 and held in Taganka prison. He was accused of saying among like-⁠minded people that never in history had the Russian people suffered as now, but that the Russian people are Orthodox and God-⁠bearing, that the time will come when they will show their strength and throw off the godless yoke by the power of God. He did not admit guilt of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, but declared that he belonged to the True Orthodox Church. On 14 February an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 17 February he was shot. He was buried in the common grave at Butovo.

He was glorified among the New Martyrs of Russia at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000. In 2009 the house church of the Timiryazev Agrarian University was consecrated in his honour, with its feast on 17 February. He left works of exegesis, sermons and articles, among them a speech at the funeral of the historian Klyuchevsky.