Nicholas of Vologda

Saint Nicholas of Vologda (in the world Nikolai Matveevich Rynin, 1777 to 1837) was a fool for Christ in the city of Vologda. He was born on 9 (22) May 1777 into a wealthy merchant family and fell asleep in 1837. He is commemorated on the day of his repose, 19 March (1 April on the new calendar), and on 20 June (3 July), the day of his glorification. Our sources say he was canonized by the Russian Church in 1988, but the glorification of 3 July 1988, with the blessing of Patriarch Pimen, is called local.

Youth and voluntary poverty

He was baptized in the church of Saint Blasius, in whose parish stood his father's house, two floors, half of stone, with a malt factory. He learned to read and write in childhood and from early years longed to serve God. He rejected wealth, giving his property to the poor, and lived on alms. His favourite place of prayer and solitude was the Prilutsky monastery, five versts from Vologda, where he stayed long near the tombs of Saints Demetrius and Ignatius, on the church porch, in the shade of the trees.

He went from place to place, staying long at Vologda, Kadnikov and Totma, where many citizens respected him. He walked with a large staff in his hand, hatless in summer and winter (sometimes wrapping his head in a towel), in a blue coarse-⁠linen smock and a long white shirt, with worn leather shoes. He was received in the houses of the city's notables and by Bishop Onesiphorus. Rynin was held to be a seer. Archimandrite Pimen (Myasnikov, died 1880), a native of Vologda, remembered that Rynin was a Vologda merchant, over forty, tall, with long unkempt hair and a black beard, who spoke in a clipped, rapid way, in a thick hoarse bass. He walked about the room cheerful, with his staff in hand, repeating that Nicholas goes nowhere.

Nikolai Matveevich fell asleep on 19 March 1837 and was buried in the Bogorodskoe cemetery, beside the church of the Mother of God in Vologda.

The chapel on the grave

At his own wish, for a long time no cross stood on his grave. The first cross was set up by a peasant woman of the Exaltation of the Cross parish, beyond Kadnikov. Until the 1880s the grave differed from others in being much dug into, for those who revered him took sand from it, and the cross leaned over. In the 1880s a merchant's widow, N. M. Korovina, made a roof on four wooden posts and a high railing. Another devotee, A. M. Krylova, built in 1899 a small chapel of boards, covered with iron, with four windows and the entrance on the west. In 1905 the chapel was painted blue, with a wooden iconostasis with gilded carving and three large icons: the Resurrection of Christ in the middle, the Dormition of the Mother of God on the right and Saint Nicholas on the left, the namesake of the departed. On the wall hung a portrait of Nikolai Matveevich.

In 1914 (by other accounts in 1916, from the gifts of the people of Vologda), the warden of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, Nikolai Kubryakov, raised a stone chapel in the name of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, which has survived to this day, to the plan of the Vologda engineer Devyatkov. The chapel was closed in 1938 and used as a warehouse, and its dome was lost. It was returned to the faithful in 1988, and the cathedral parish cleared it of rubbish, repaired the floor and restored the dome and cross.

Glorification

On 3 July 1988, with the blessing of Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and all Russia, the local glorification of the blessed Nicholas Rynin took place, attended by Archbishop Melchizedek of Sverdlovsk and Kurgan, formerly bishop of Vologda. After the Liturgy at the cathedral there was a procession and the restored chapel over the saint's burial place was consecrated. The righteous Nicholas of Vologda is still venerated today by the people of Vologda and by those who come from elsewhere, and at the cathedral a journal is kept of healings and of cases of help received through prayers to him. Every year on 1 April the day of his repose is kept, and on the day of his glorification, after the Liturgy at the cathedral, a procession goes to the chapel and a molieben is served. Our source gives 3 June for the day of glorification, though elsewhere it names 3 July.