Paraskeva of Pirinem

The holy righteous Paraskeva of Pirinem (or Piriminsk) is a locally venerated saint of the Pinega region in northern Russia, whose relics were found in 1610 in the village of Pirinem, in the Kevrol district (today the Pinega district of Arkhangelsk Oblast). Almost nothing is known of her life, but after her death she was glorified by many miracles. She is commemorated on 23 June and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod, on the third Sunday after Pentecost.

What is known of her life

The sources say nothing of her earthly life. According to the old literary text "The Miracles of Paraskeva of Pirinem", the people of Pinega who took part in establishing her veneration had visions in which they were shown only that the new saint's name was Praskovia, that she was of "maidenly appearance" and "of peasant stock". According to an oral folk tradition she was the sister of the righteous Artemy of Verkola, another saint of Pinega about whose life very little is known. Scholars think the tradition may have been a way of giving weight to the new saint by making her a relative of Artemy, who was officially venerated.

The finding of the relics and the miracles

According to the account, the people of Pirinem gathered to repair a decayed chapel. For three years before, the parishioners had noticed that heat came from beneath the floor so strong that in winter the wall was covered with frost. When they lifted the boards they found beneath them a coffin with relics unknown to them; when they tried to examine them, the candle went out "as if by wind" and relit when they moved it away. One of the peasants present was healed of an illness he had by touching the coffin.

The name of the new saint was first revealed in a vision to Theophylact, priest of the parish of Chakola, to which Pirinem then belonged. After half a year the saint appeared in a dream to a peasant of the Shasten district, Euphimius, told him her name again and commanded him to call the people to bow before her relics in order to receive healing from their illnesses. Euphimius told his wife of the dream, but she, fearing mockery, advised him to tell no one. He did not heed her and told the villagers of the vision, but they did not believe him, and when he returned home he found that his wife had gone blind. After some time Euphimius had a second vision of Paraskeva, who asked the sick to pray to God, the Most Holy Mother of God, the Great Martyr George, all the saints and the new wonderworker Praskovia. Euphimius told Father Theophylact, who went with the sick to sing molebens and venerate the saint's coffin at Pirinem, where the sick, among them Euphimius's wife, were healed.

In 1612 Abbot Macarius of the Chernogorsk monastery and the priest Theophylact of Chakola examined the relics. They found "the head and the other parts, not in flesh but bones only", then moved them with the old coffin into a new one placed in the chapel. According to the account, in winter warmth came from the coffin, so that the walls were covered with frost. By 1710 at least eighteen miraculous healings at the tomb were recorded, but it is said that there were more, only the records were lost in a fire of 1643 and the details forgotten.

Veneration

In 1710 the parish priest John Kozmin and the steward Alexei Yakovlev, setting out briefly the history of the finding of Paraskeva's relics and of her miracles, asked Archbishop Raphael on behalf of the parishioners for leave to sing molebens at the relics. But, like many other popular cults, the cult of Paraskeva of Pirinem did not win the approval of church hierarchs. In reply Raphael ordered that molebens be sung only to the Great Martyr George and the Great Martyr Paraskeva of Iconium, and that "the chapel be locked and sealed by the village constable".

In 1711, by order of the archbishop, the relics were examined by a commission of representatives of the bishop's house, the hieromonk Porphyry, the hieromonk Anthony, builder of the Verkola Hermitage, priests of nearby parishes and the local one, and a deacon. It was again seen that the relics were subject to decay, the bones dry but complete, while the white cloth with a cross that covered the body had not decayed despite its age. After the examination the relics were sprinkled with holy water, the coffin covered with a board and the old cloth. The notebook of the miracles was taken from the chapel, which was locked again, and it was ordered that no molebens be sung to Paraskeva until a further order from the bishop.

It is not known whether the order came, but veneration continued, not only from Pirinem but from surrounding and even remote parishes, with memorial services instead of molebens at the tomb. The faithful celebrated the day of the finding of her relics with molebens in the fields to various saints and with memorial services at the righteous woman's tomb. Hunters and fishermen vowed to George and the new saint that if they succeeded they would bring them an offering. Because of the unceasing veneration, in 1737 another inquiry was held at Pirinem, after which the local priests were ordered to send the Arkhangelsk spiritual consistory regular reports on the state of the cult.

In 1799 a church of the Twelve Apostles was built on the site of the old chapel and the relics were moved there. In 1843 Bishop George thought that the coffin should be lowered under the church or taken to a separate place, so that it would not be an object of veneration; at the parishioners' request the relics stayed in the church, on condition that no molebens be served, only memorial services. In 1902 the "box with dust and coffin" was opened again, a diagram of the relics was drawn, and then Bishop Ioannicius ordered that, during the rebuilding of the church, the box with the bones be buried under the church. In 1904 a stone foundation was put under the church and the relics were hidden "under a bushel". The church of the Twelve Apostles burned in the 1980s and the relics are now lost; according to one version they were hidden by parishioners or destroyed by the Bolsheviks during the Civil War.

Iconography and modern views

The first icon of Paraskeva of Pirinem was painted not later than 1771. The inventory of 1800 describes it showing her praying to the Mother of God, with a crown and an oklad of gilded silver, with many offerings. The church was closed in 1931 and the old icon did not survive. At the beginning of the twenty-⁠first century a new iconography appeared: in 2009 her image was included in the painting of the Dormition church in Arkhangelsk; in 2013 a graduate of the icon-⁠painting department of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy painted a lectern icon; for the church of the Twelve Apostles, built anew in Pirinem in 2014, an icon painter from Krasnoyarsk painted a joint icon of Paraskeva of Pirinem and Artemy of Verkola.

Scholars place Paraskeva of Pirinem in a type characteristic of the Russian North, the "saints from the tomb": righteous laypeople (often young) of the common people, who became famous not by the circumstances of their lives, about which little or nothing is known, but by an unusual death or the unexpected appearance of relics and the miracles that followed. According to N. V. Savelyeva, the tales of her clearly reflect features of local popular religion and of the cult of Saint Paraskeva of Iconium (Paraskeva-⁠Friday). D. M. Bulanin and N. V. Savelyeva note that "The Miracles of Paraskeva of Pirinem" survives in its original form, with minimal literary editing and with features of the local speech, and that the part on the finding of the relics is historically trustworthy, since the persons named are known from documents and from other works of the seventeenth-⁠century Pinega literary tradition.