John of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr John of Valaam, a novice, was one of the sixteen novices killed together with eighteen elders at the Valaam monastery on 20 February 1578. The monastery, near the border of Great Novgorod with Sweden, was many times laid waste by the Swedes. In the time of John III of Sweden, a band of Lutheran soldiers, pursuing the Orthodox Karelians, crossed the ice to the island and attacked the community. For their steadfastness in the Orthodox faith they were killed.

The names of those killed were written in a synodikon that later came to the Vasilievsky monastery, with the note "killed by the Germans on Valaam, elders and servants". Among the novices listed there is a John, named after Theophilus and before Theodore. The page says nothing of his life before his death. The vision of the bloodied monks seen in the nineteenth century near the hermitage of the elder Nazarius, and the yearly Liturgy of 20 February (4 March in the new style), with a general memorial service, held at Valaam with the blessing of Abbot Damascene, belong to all thirty-⁠four.

The Council of Bishops of August 2000 numbered them among the saints of the Russian Church, for veneration throughout the Church. The Church commemorates him on 5 March, on a movable day, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, and on 22 August, on a movable day, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.