Leontius of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Leontius of Valaam was one of the thirty-⁠four monks and novices of the Valaam monastery put to death for the Orthodox faith on 20 February 1578. In their synodikon, Leontius appears among the novices.

The Valaam monastery, lying near the border between the lands of Novgorod and Sweden, had been laid waste by the Swedes several times. Under King Gustav Vasa (1523-1560) the Reformation had been carried out in Sweden, and in the time of his son John III a band of soldiers, recent Lutherans, still full, in the words of Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, of a fanatical passion for their newborn faith, pursued the Orthodox Karelians, crossed the ice from the mainland to the island and attacked the monastery. Eighteen blessed elders and sixteen novices were put to death as martyrs for their steadfastness in Orthodoxy.

Their names, with the note "beaten by the Germans at Valaam, elders and servants", were written in a synodikon that later came to the Vasilievsky monastery: the priest-⁠monk Titus, the schemamonk Tikhon, the monks Gelasius, Sergius, Barlaam, Sabbas, Conon, Silvester, Cyprian, Pimen, John, Samon, Jonah, David, Cornelius, Niphon, Athanasius and Serapion, then the novices Athanasius, Anthony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Philip, Ignatius, Basil, Pachomius, Theophilus, John and Theodore. In the nineteenth century a monk near the hermitage of Abbot Nazarius received a vision: unknown monks walked in two rows out of a sunlit grove and chanted funeral prayers; when they came near, he saw that they were sprinkled with blood and full of wounds, while the grass was not crushed under them, and then they vanished into the thicket.

With the blessing of Abbot Damascene, on 20 February (4 March new style) the Liturgy for their repose was served at Valaam, with a common memorial service. At the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000 they were numbered among the saints of the Russian Orthodox Church. Saint Leontius is commemorated on 5 March, in the new style, and by movable observance also on 3 June, with the saints of Karelia, and on 22 August, with the saints of Valaam.