Nicholas Yakhontov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Yakhontov was a priest in the Perm province and was drowned in the river Kama on 17 December 1918, together with the archpriest John Pyankov.

The Azbyka page holds the life of the Holy Hieromartyr John Pyankov and names Nicholas Yakhontov only as his companion. On 17 December 1918 both (by other accounts John was taken together with the Holy Hieromartyr Alexis Saburov) were seized by the Reds and, after cruel torments and mockery, were bound together and drowned in the Kama.

John Pyankov

John Petrovich Pyankov was born in 1856, in the Perm province, in the family of a psalm-⁠reader. He finished the Perm seminary in 1875 and entered the Kazan Theological Academy, but in 1876 left at his own request and was named a teacher. On 24 April 1877 he was ordained priest and served in several villages of the Okhansk district. In 1881 he was assistant to the district missionary, in 1884 assistant rector of the church of the Holy Trinity at the Kushva works and teacher of religion at the orphanage, and from 1887 he served at the Alexander Nevsky hospital church in Perm and taught religion at the technical school. He was elected to various diocesan committees for education, from 1894 he was dean of the churches of Perm, and from 1900 archpriest. In 1909 he was named chairman of the committee for the building of the stone church of the Nativity of Christ in Perm; from 1910 he served with the Holy Martyr John Plotnikov at the church of the Meeting of the Lord at the Pyshma works, and in his last years he was rector of the church of the Resurrection in Perm. He received the orders of Saint Vladimir, fourth class, and Saint Anne, second and third class. John was tied to a prison bed and plunged several times into the icy water, then drowned in the river.

They were numbered among the saints by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in the year 2000. Nicholas Yakhontov is remembered on 17 December, on 14 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.