Marcellus Shivrin

Holy Venerable Martyr Marcellus Shivrin, a monk of the Belogorsk (White Mountain) monastery, was killed in the Bolshevik persecution, in 1918, together with his abbot, Archimandrite Barlaam, and other brethren. The Azbyka page gives the history of the monastery and its abbot in the life of the Venerable Martyr Barlaam and his brethren, and of Marcellus it says only that he is named among the monks killed.

Barlaam, in the world Vasily Efimovich Konoplev, was born in 1858 in a family of priestless Old Believers of the Perm region. Seeking the truth, he joined the Orthodox Church in the 1890s through the Mystery of Chrismation, together with his father, brothers and relatives, nineteen people in all. In 1893 he was tonsured a rassophore and settled on the Belaya Gora (White Mountain), where those who wanted monastic life joined him in time; on 1 February 1894 he was tonsured a monk with the name Barlaam, then ordained hierodeacon and hieromonk. He was placed at the head of the newly built missionary monastery on the White Mountain, later called the Athos of the Urals, ordered the services by the typikon, raised preaching before the people, morning and evening, and was a renowned guide of conscience, to whom many came from the Perm region and even from remote lands. In June 1917 the last great feast was held in the monastery, the consecration of the cathedral.

In August 1918 the Bolsheviks seized the monastery. In the altar of the cathedral the Red soldiers overturned and defiled the altar table, in Archimandrite Barlaam's cell they made a latrine, and the icon-⁠painters' workshop they turned into a theatre, where the monastery's boy choristers were forced to sing worldly songs. Many monks were killed after cruel torments. On 12 (25) August the Red soldiers arrested the abbot Barlaam and shot him on the road to the town of Osa. Many monks also received a martyr's death: the hieromonks Sergius, Elias, Vyacheslav, Joasaph, John, Anthony; the hierodeacons Michael, Vissarion, Matthew, Euthymius; the monks Barnabas, Demetrius, Savva, Hermogenes, Arcadius, Euthymius and Marcellus; the novices John, James, Peter, James, Alexander, Theodore, Peter, Sergius and Alexis. The graves of the martyrs were hidden by the authorities and are unknown.

They were glorified in 1998 as local saints of the Perm diocese and were numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church.

Marcellus is commemorated on 25 August, in the new style, on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on the movable day around 14 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis.