Sabbatius of Kostroma

Holy Venerable Martyr Sabbatius of Kostroma, a hieromonk, was one of the monks of the Epiphany Monastery in Kostroma killed on 30 December 1608 (old style) by the Polish-⁠Lithuanian interventionists and their helpers, in the Time of Troubles. He is venerated as a local saint of the Kostroma region.

Kostroma has been since the seventeenth century one of the symbols of the overcoming of the Time of Troubles. The Epiphany Monastery, founded in the 1420s by Venerable Nikita of Kostroma, disciple and kinsman of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, was at the beginning of the seventeenth century well ordered. In the autumn of 1608 the troops of the supporters of False Dmitry II, called the Thief of Tushino, had defeated the government forces at Rakhmantsevo and at Rostov. Like the inhabitants of other cities, the people of Kostroma decided to swear loyalty to the Thief of Tushino, hoping to keep from plunder and death; an embassy of nobles and townsmen, headed by Archimandrite Theodosius of the Ipatiev Monastery and Abbot Arsenius of the Epiphany Monastery, went to Tushino. Soon, however, the lawlessness of the interventionists led to a popular uprising, and in Kostroma the new authority was overthrown; the traitor governor, Prince Gorbaty-⁠Mosalsky, was seized and killed.

To put down the uprising, the Tushino men sent punitive detachments, led by Colonel Lisovsky, with two thousand Cossacks and 608 mercenaries. The local militia could not withstand them. On 28 December (old style) 1608 Kostroma was taken, but on 30 December (old style) the monastery was taken by force and laid waste, and its defenders died as martyrs. The church historian I. V. Bazhenov wrote of them that the monks of the Epiphany Monastery, loyal to Tsar Shuisky, shut themselves in the monastery and chose rather to lose their treasures and their lives than to betray their duty and oath; they died as martyrs of fidelity after the monastery was taken by force, and the robbers plundered the icons, vessels, vestments and books and destroyed the charters.

In the synodikon of the monastery (from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth) there is a note listing the victims of this attack: the hieromonks Triphyllius, Macarius and Sabbatius, the hierodeacon Athenogenes, the monks Barlaam, Dionysius, Job, Herodion, Symeon, Cyril, Maximus, Joasaph and Gurias, three servants, five women servants and thirty-⁠four peasants of the monastery. The monks of the Exaltation of the Cross Monastery in the Kostroma kremlin also perished: Archimandrite Gennadius, the hieromonk Anthony and nine monks. The triumph of the interventionists was short: in February 1609 a new uprising seized Kostroma, many traitor nobles were drowned in the Volga, and the detachment left in the city hid in the Ipatiev Monastery, but was soon crushed. The memory of the slain was kept every year in the Epiphany Monastery, with a memorial service and Liturgy on 30 December. The tradition continued even after, in the nineteenth century, the monastery became a convent (Epiphany-⁠Anastasia), until its closure in the twentieth century.

The restoration of the monastery, begun in 1990, brought with it the revival of the old customs. On 5 March 2004 Patriarch Alexy II approved the list of the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma, which contains also the names of the defenders of the Epiphany Monastery killed in the Time of Troubles. Since then they are venerated as local saints of the Kostroma land.

St Sabbatius is commemorated on 5 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Kostroma Metropolis, in the new style.