Pitirim of Perm

Saint Pitirim was the fourth bishop of Perm (Great Perm), killed in 1455 by the Mansi. He is venerated in the Russian Church as a hierarch and commemorated by the old calendar on 29 January and 19 August.

From 1440 he was abbot of the Chudov monastery in Moscow. In 1444 he was made bishop of Perm and sent to govern the diocese after the murder, in 1443, of the holy hierarch Gerasim. From the first days of his stay in the Perm land, inhabited by the Komi-⁠Permyaks, Komi-⁠Zyrians, Udmurts and other peoples who spoke Finno-⁠Ugric languages, he began to establish order and to set up his vast diocese. To the year 1444 the Vychegda-⁠Perm chronicle assigns Pitirim's baptism of the Udorians (a sub-⁠ethnos of the Komi-⁠Zyrians), who lived on the river Vashka. In 1447 he was summoned to Moscow for the council's trial of the rebellious prince of Galich, Dmitry Yurievich Shemyaka.

Returning to Ust-⁠Vymsky Gorodok, Pitirim was shaken by the devastations that the prince of Pelym, Asyka, had wrought in the Komi-⁠Zyrian villages nearest the river Pechora. Pitirim helped the Komi-⁠Zyrians as far as he could and distributed to them everything he had brought from Moscow for building churches and monasteries. In 1448 he went again to Moscow for the installation of Metropolitan Jonah. Grand Prince Vasily II, letting Pitirim go, endowed the Zyrian churches and the Pechora monastery, founded by the second bishop of Perm, Isaac, with rich gifts, and reduced the tribute of the inhabitants of the Perm land, which was often ravaged by the Vyatchans and Voguls (Mansi). Pitirim travelled through almost his whole diocese, reaching the deepest regions on the Pechora and its tributaries, endured hardships regardless of danger, and achieved great success, baptizing Mansi who roamed the tributaries of the Pechora.

One Sunday in 1455, after the Liturgy, Pitirim, at the head of the clergy and a great number of people, with icons and banners, came to the cape formed by the confluence of the rivers Vym and Vychegda, where a service of supplication was to be held. Suddenly a band of armed Mansi appeared, on an expedition toward Great Perm. They fell upon the faithful, and the first victim was Pitirim. He was buried in the church of the Annunciation at Ust-⁠Vym, beside his predecessor, Bishop Gerasim. Today Pitirim's relics rest under a slab in the chapel of the three hierarchs, Gerasim, Pitirim and Jonah, wonderworkers of Ust-⁠Vym, consecrated on 7 May 1996 by Patriarch Alexy II. In 1458 Vasily II sent a strong army of Muscovites and Ustyugans to pacify the Mansi and the Vyatchans; it took many towns and villages in the Vyatka land, laid a heavy tribute on the Mansi and annexed Vyatka to the Grand Principality of Moscow.

The commemoration of his repose was entered in the typikon as early as 1522. The all-⁠Russian veneration of the holy hierarchs of Perm, Gerasim, Pitirim and Jonah, was established in 1607, when, by order of Tsar Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky and Patriarch Hermogenes, Bishop Joasaph of Vologda and Great Perm painted an icon of the hierarchs of Perm, depicted standing, which stood above their tomb. The Book of Degrees names Pitirim as the first compiler of the life of Metropolitan Alexis and of the canon on the finding of this saint's relics; among his works are a short description of the life of Saint Alexis and the canon on the finding of the relics of Saint Alexis (Menaion of 20 May).