Jonah of Sinozero

Holy Venerable Martyr Jonah of Sinozero was a monk of the Sinozero hermitage in the land of Novgorod, a disciple of Saint Euphrosynus of Sinozero, and he died together with him in 1612, in the Time of Troubles.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century he came to Venerable Euphrosynus and became his disciple. In those years bands of Poles, Swedes and Russian traitors burned towns and villages and killed the people who did not manage to hide. Among the places that suffered greatly was the hermitage founded by Euphrosynus at Sinozero.

On 19 March 1612 Euphrosynus gathered around him the monks and the lay people who had sheltered there from the Poles. He told them of a divine revelation he had received and urged them to leave the monastery, for cruel enemies would soon come. He himself stayed, saying that he had come there for Christ and would die there. The monk Jonah also wished to flee, but Euphrosynus strengthened him from the Scriptures, reminding him that now was the time for the struggle and that death should not be feared, and then counselled him to stay. Jonah obeyed and remained.

On 20 March (2 April, new style) Euphrosynus put on the schema habit and stood at the cross that he had set up when the hermitage was founded, with Jonah beside him. The robbers plundered the monastery and killed the two venerable fathers. Only on 28 March (10 April, new style) could the people and priests gather to bury them with the singing of psalms.

Venerable Jonah is commemorated on 11 July (new style, a movable day), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda and Novgorod.