Michael Blagievsky

Saint Michael Blagievsky, hieromartyr (born Michael Ioannovich Kobozev, 1874 to 1937), was an archpriest in the diocese of Ryazan, shot at Ryazhsk on 23 December 1937 (10 December Old Style) for his faith. He was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia in 2005 by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, with the name Blagievsky after the village where he had served.

Life

He was born on 4 February 1874 in the village of Spas-⁠Leonovshchina in the Yegoryevsk district, to the deacon John Lvovich Kobozev of the Transfiguration church and his wife Maria Gavrilovna. In 1892 he finished the church school at Skopin. He worked as a primary school teacher and in 1897 completed courses in church singing. In 1898 Bishop Melety ordained him deacon for the church of the Holy Spirit in the village of Blagie, where he also taught religion in the parish school. In 1910 he was moved as deacon to the church of the Ascension in Ranenburg. For his good teaching he received a silver medal, and not long afterwards he was ordained priest.

After the revolution the Bolsheviks set up an office in the building next to the church of the Ascension, and in 1932 the church was closed. Father Michael left his family at Ranenburg and took a parish in the village of Dmitrievsky Borovok. In 1933 Archbishop Juvenaly of Ryazan raised him to the rank of archpriest. In 1937 he was serving in the church at Blagie, where he had begun his priestly ministry, and he served with zeal; he is said to have remarked, "I want to suffer for Christ".

Arrest and martyrdom

In October 1937 he was arrested on false charges, together with eight other clergy of the Novoderevensk district. The pretext was that they had all gathered in the village of Zimarovo for the feast of the Bogolyubovo icon of the Mother of God, which was treated as a counter-⁠revolutionary meeting. The English source says he was arrested on 26 October. On 6 December he was sentenced to death, and on 23 December he was shot in the prison at Ryazhsk. The place of burial is unknown. He was rehabilitated on 16 January 1989.

His eldest son, Nicholas, a teacher in the Red Army, had to be present at his father's arrest and, shaken by it, soon left the army and often changed his residence for fear of persecution. His wife, Sofia Nikolaevna (born Tresvyatskaya), died in 1956. They had seven children.

Veneration

On 16 July 2005, at the initiative of the diocese of Ryazan, he was glorified as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church and added to the Synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of the twentieth century. In the summer of 2009 a memorial plaque was placed on the house where he lived in Ranenburg, now called Chaplygin. He is commemorated on 23 December (10 December Old Style), the day of his martyrdom.