Philip of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Philip of Valaam was a novice of the Valaam Monastery and received the crown of martyrdom on 20 February 1578, together with thirty-⁠three other brethren, killed by the Swedes.

The Valaam Monastery, near the border between Novgorod and Sweden, was in the course of the centuries plundered several times by the Swedes. In the time of King John III, son of Gustav Vasa, a band of recently converted Lutherans, who, in the words of Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, still burned with a fanatical love for their new faith, pursued the Orthodox Karelians and crossed over the ice to the island. Eighteen elders and sixteen novices were killed for steadfastness in Orthodoxy. Their names, recorded in a synodikon with the note beaten by the Germans on Valaam, elders and servants, later reached the Vasilievsky Monastery. Among the novices Philip is named, beside Athanasius, Anthony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Ignatius, Basil, Pachomius, a second Basil, Theophilus, John, Theodore and a second John. Nothing is said of Philip in particular.

A monk of Valaam saw in the nineteenth century, near the hermitage of Abbot Nazarius, unknown monks who came in two rows out of a sunlit grove and sang funeral prayers, full of light and gentleness, yet spattered with blood, without treading down the grass. With the blessing of Abbot Damascene the Liturgy for the repose of the thirty-⁠four was served every year on 20 February (4 March in the new style), with a common memorial service. They were glorified for the whole Russian Church by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000. The Azbyka page also commemorates Philip on 3 June.