Nicodemus Shchapkov

Holy Venerable Martyr Nicodemus Shchapkov was a hieromonk of the Saint Nicholas Monastery at Koryazhma and was shot on 30 September 1918, together with two archimandrites and another hieromonk.

With him were killed the archimandrite Paul (Moiseev), abbot of the monastery, the archimandrite Theodosius (Sobolev), retired from the Entry Monastery at Solvychegodsk, and the hieromonk Seraphim (Kulakov).

Nicodemus

He was born on 20 October 1852 in the Vologda province, in the family of an Ustyug townsman, Konstantin Ivanovich Shchapkov, and Tatiana Lvovna, and received the name Nicholas at baptism. At twenty-⁠one he left his parents' house and went to the Trinity Stefano-⁠Ulyanovsky monastery. For almost ten years he served his apprenticeship for the monastic struggle: after six years he was made a reader, in 1883 a novice, and he had the obedience of cobbler, which he fulfilled with diligence. On 7 August 1886 he was tonsured a monk with the name Nicodemus, a year later ordained hierodeacon, and on 25 May 1896, on the feast of the Evangelist Mark, hieromonk, at the age of forty-⁠four. After a year he was transferred to the Koryazhma monastery, where his exemplary conduct and pastoral service won the brothers' respect. He took part in the renewal of the monastery.

The killing

On 23 September 1918 the extraordinary commission at Solvychegodsk received the denunciation of an illiterate man, who said that suspicious people were hiding in the monastery. On 30 September the military commissar and members of the commission came to the monastery and demanded that the leadership hand over all the hiding places, above all the money. The five accused answered no to every question. The commission judged that they had resisted authority and decided to shoot them; Theodosius and Seraphim were counted in the monastery's leadership though they had no responsibility for its economy. Without waiting for confirmation of the decision, the killers took the saints to a deserted island on the river Vychegda and shot them at two in the afternoon on 30 September 1918: the archimandrite Theodosius, in his seventy-⁠seventh year, the archimandrite Paul, in his seventieth, the hieromonk Nicodemus, aged sixty-⁠five, and the hieromonk Seraphim, aged forty-⁠five.

Nicodemus is remembered on 30 September, on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, and on 1 November in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Archangelsk Metropolis, in the new style.