Philip of Aglomazov

Holy Martyr Philip of Aglomazov died shot in 1918, in the village of Aglomazovo in the Tambov province, together with Father Nicholas Probatov and other laymen of the parish. The page names him only in the list of those killed, beside Naum, with whom he is given as father and son.

Father Nicholas Probatov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Probatov was born in 1874 in the village of Ignatievo, near the town of Kadom in the Tambov province, the younger son of the priest Alexander Nikolaevich Probatov and his wife Elikonida. He studied at the church school of Kasimov and then at the Tambov seminary, in great material want. At the end of the seminary he married Barbara, the daughter of a priest of Temirevo, and after the wedding the couple went, by the pious custom of the time, on pilgrimage to the Sarov Monastery. In 1899 he was ordained priest and appointed second priest at the church of Temirevo, but he wished to serve alone, and in 1906 he received the parish of Aglomazovo, with a wooden church of the Epiphany built in 1779. He renewed the iconostasis, set up a choir and a fine common singing. Before the Liturgy he prayed long, served with inspiration and reverence, and said of the service at the altar that it was a corner of paradise. In the village, with a thousand parishioners, he built a spacious school in which two hundred children could study. A talented preacher, he preached in church and taught the Law of God in the school. The family lived in poverty, but he took no payment for services, and had only two pairs of shoes, one for winter and one for summer.

In the First World War, when Bishop Cyril of Tambov asked the clergy to go as priests to the army at the front, and few volunteers were found, Father Nicholas was ashamed: soldiers were shedding their blood for the homeland, while priests stood aside. Though he had three children, the eldest fourteen, the youngest a year old, he went as a regimental priest in the Bakhmut regiment, which fought against the Austrians. He saw there how little faith remained: of the whole regiment, no more than thirty people attended church. Returning in 1917, he said bitterly to those close to him that priests were no longer needed, being now rather inhabitants of Heaven than of earth.

The uprising and the punitive detachment

The revolution touched the souls of the peasants too: many began to cut down state and landowners' forests and to divide the lands of the great proprietors. When soldiers came to take the registry books from the church, Father Nicholas refused to hand them over without the approval of church authority and proposed an assembly of the peasants. He spoke at the assembly, and the peasants drove out those who wanted the books. In February 1918, when the Bolsheviks announced mobilization into the Red Guard, the peasants decided not to enlist and to go to the nearby town to disperse the Bolshevik authorities, and asked the priest for a supplicatory service for the road. After the service he gave a short sermon, ending with a blessing to go to fight the persecutors of the Church of Christ. The peasants, armed with axes and pitchforks, set out for the town, twenty-⁠five versts away, but many changed their minds on the way, and when those who remained drew near, they were met by a burst of machine-⁠gun fire from the bell tower and scattered.

The Bolsheviks did not forgive those who had opposed them and sent a punitive detachment to Aglomazovo. Father Nicholas sent his family to the neighbouring village of Kalinovets, where his wife's brother served. His wife told him that Scripture says that the Lord does not send trials beyond a man's strength, and he, opening the Apostle at random, read that God is faithful and will not allow temptation beyond strength. These words calmed him. The peasants told him to flee, but he answered that he had never fled and would not flee now. Only the eldest son, Alexander, remained. When the detachment appeared, the priest said that the Roman legions were coming. The punishers settled in a large brick house, and the arrested were taken to the cellar. The lists of arrests had been made by the village schoolteacher, a godless man. Father Nicholas was beaten with steel rods on the soles of his feet, to make him dance, but he answered that he had never danced and would not dance before death. His tormentors mocked him, asking why the Mother of God, to whom he prayed, did not defend him. He answered that Christ endured without sin, and we endure for our sins. Of the women put on the list, the head of the detachment left only Agafia, alone in the world, for whom there was no one to intercede; she was long and cruelly tormented, but bore it in silence.

The shooting

In the evening, around seven o'clock, the soldiers led eighteen condemned men out of the cellar and took them to the river Tsna. Before death all confessed. Father Nicholas, with raised hands, said the prayer aloud: Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do. A volley was fired. Though it had grown dark, he rose and, with hands lifted, went on praying: It is truly meet to bless thee, O Theotokos. With the second volley he was killed. Of the eighteen, thirteen died, and the others crawled by night to the nearest houses and were hidden by the villagers; from them the details are known. Killed were the church warden Cosma Egorovich, the peasants Victor Krasnov, Naum and Philip, father and son, John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexei, John and Agafia.

In the morning the peasants brought the dead, and Alexander took also the layer of sand soaked with blood. The priest's body was stiff, with the hands raised in the last prayer and the fingers joined for blessing. As it was carried through the village, people said that the Father blessed them even dead. His wife asked to bury him beside the church, but the punishers refused, allowing only the cemetery. Priests of neighbouring parishes, Paul Maltsev and Maxim, came to bury him, with the windows covered with black cloth so that the punishers should not see, and the burial was done in the dead of night, by the light of the moon and the stars.

The martyrs are commemorated, according to the Azbyka page, on 23 June and on 11 November.