Leontius Karpovich

Holy Venerable Leontius Karpovich, an archimandrite, was elected bishop of Vladimir and Brest, but died before ordination. He was born around 1580, the son of a priest, of the nobility of the Pinsk district. From childhood he lived in Vilna and probably studied at the school of the Orthodox brotherhood of Vilna (by another opinion, in the Orthodox schools of the Ostrogs in Volhynia, together with the famous hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Peter Konashevich-⁠Sahaidachny). In 1606, according to Philaret, archbishop of Chernigov, or in 1608, as hierodeacon of the Caves, others holding that he was a layman until 1610, he wrote the work "Refutation of the Union", in which he describes the Union as an eyewitness of the Diet of Brest of 1595. In 1609 Leontius Karpovich was at the Diet of Warsaw as a deputy of the Orthodox brotherhood of Vilna. In 1610 he was already scribe, chief printer and corrector of the Vilna brotherhood; for printing the "Threnos" of Meletius Smotrytsky, written in an anti-⁠Catholic spirit, by order of King Sigismund III he was seized by the servants of the Latin bishop of Vilna and on Great Saturday thrown into prison, where he stayed two years. This "confession" of his, linked with his earlier labours for the brotherhood, made him almost immediately after his release "priest of the new church and head of the brotherhood of the same church".

In 1613 and 1614 Leontius Karpovich was the builder of the Holy Spirit monastery in Vilna, raised not far from the Holy Trinity monastery taken from the Orthodox brotherhood by the Uniates, and became its first archimandrite and head of the Vilna brotherhood, and in 1617 rector of the brotherhood school at the Holy Spirit monastery. Proof of this are five speeches of pupils, delivered in 1618 and the years near it, found in a collection of the Kiev Saint Sophia library, and in part the epistle written by him in pure Church Slavonic in the name of the Vilna brotherhood to the Lvov brotherhood, in which among other things the building of a stone school house is mentioned and a request is made for teachers and useful books to be sent. Peter Mogila says in his notes that Leontius Karpovich was "the first head of common life in the city of Vilna", and there is no doubt that he composed the "Cenobion, or the Image of Monastic Common Life" of the Vilna church brotherhood, printed at Yevye in 1618. According to the testimony of Zacharias Kopystensky, Leontius Karpovich "was a God-⁠inspired man, famed for his skill in Greek and Latin, and a defender of right belief", a man of great piety and zealous pastor, who preached the Word of God unceasingly at the Divine Liturgy, which he celebrated almost daily. That he was a remarkable preacher is proved by his two sermons, on the Transfiguration and on the Dormition of the Mother of God, written in the West Russian dialect and printed at Yevye in 1615. The first was reprinted in "Mayak" for 1843. The late Archimandrite Leonid, the well-⁠known deputy superior of the Trinity Lavra, translated these sermons into Russian, to save them from undeserved oblivion. In the words of Metropolitan Macarius, they show in Karpovich "not a mere reader of books, such as appeared among us not rarely before him, but a man of serious education, and not only an expert in Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, but a fairly developed thinker and a fairly skilful orator".

In 1616 a translation of the Sunday teachings of Patriarch Callistus from Slavonic into the commonly used Russian (Belarusian) language was printed at Yevye, made by the monks of the Holy Spirit brotherhood monastery in Vilna headed by Archimandrite Leontius, and repeated with few changes in the edition of Peter Mogila (Kiev, 1637). In 1619 there was published at Vilna, in Polish and Russian, his funeral oration at the burial of Prince Basil Vasilievich Golitsyn, who with Philaret Nikitich Romanov had spent several years in Polish captivity and, freed, died on the way, at Grodno. In 1620 were printed translated by him from Greek the "Exposition of the Lord's Prayer" by Saint John Chrysostom and the "Spiritual Garden" of Fecara, with a preface by Leontius Karpovich. In the same year he was elected bishop of Vladimir and Brest, but before ordination he died in the middle of September of that year. His death was mourned in the well-⁠known sermon of Meletius Smotrytsky, "Sermon at the honoured burial of Father Leontius Karpovich, bishop of Vladimir and Brest", Vilna, 1620, and in a poem. The view of his contemporaries on Leontius Karpovich and the high respect he enjoyed in all south-⁠western Russia are fully expressed in the "Mnemosyne", a panegyric offered to Metropolitan Peter Mogila by the students of his college on his return from the coronation celebrations in 1633: there he is spoken of as the "leader in patience, guide in piety, like Chrysostom in eloquence, Archimandrite Leontius Karpovich, who died a few years before", whose incorrupt relics will be seen. Karpovich also wrote a "Letter to Athos, to the hieromonks Cyril, Pachomius and Elisha" (1619).

Saint Leontius is commemorated on 11 July (the date moves), with the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus, in the new style.