Maximus of Totma

Blessed Maximus of Totma (Maxim Makarievich Popov, died 16 January 1650, at Varnitsy, Totma district) was a priest and a fool for Christ for forty-⁠five years, venerated in the Russian Church as a saint. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 16 January and on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda. His veneration is local, ordained, according to the sources, in 1715, when Archbishop Joseph of Ustyug and Totma allowed molieben to be served to him; the sources do not give the date of a canonization for the whole Church.

Life

It is not known when he was born. From the name Popov it can be judged that he was of a priest's family. It is not known when and where he received the priesthood. In youth he served as a priest at the church of the Resurrection at Varnitsy, near Totma. The reasons that led him to take on the labour of folly for Christ are not known either. Maximus remained in unceasing prayer, in fasting and in nakedness, taking no heed of the care of his body. He reposed at a great age, on 16 January 1650, and was buried at the church at Varnitsy.

Veneration

After his death a wooden church was built over his relics, dedicated to the Holy Great Martyr Paraskeva. Because the peasants had begun to receive healings at the grave, witnesses composed a tale about him, but in 1676 it burned in a fire of the new church of the Resurrection. In 1680, because of further miracles, a new record was made, also lost. Meanwhile the miracles at the righteous man's grave continued, and in 1715 the priest John Rokhletsov, with the parishioners, asked Archbishop Joseph of Ustyug and Totma for permission to make a tomb and put his image on it. The archbishop gave permission and blessed that molieben be served to him, as to the other pleasing ones of God. In the church of the Resurrection at Varnitsy a shrine was made over the burial place, and the outer wall was adorned with a fresco showing him. The first miracle recounted is the healing of a man of Totma of fever, in 1680; the second took place in 1691 with a peasant ill for nine weeks, to whom an old man appeared in a dream and sent him to venerate at the gravestone, and he was healed; the third, with a woman healed in 1705 of madness. His memory was much venerated by the people of Totma, especially on 16 (29) January.