Silvester of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Silvester of Valaam was a monk of the Valaam Monastery and was killed by the Swedes on 20 February 1578 together with thirty-⁠three other brethren.

The Valaam Monastery, near the frontier between the lands of Novgorod the Great and Sweden, was plundered by the Swedes many times. Under King John III, son of Gustav Vasa, a band of newly converted Lutherans, pursuing the Orthodox Karelians, crossed the ice to the island and attacked the monastery. Eighteen elders and sixteen novices were killed for steadfastness in the Orthodox faith, and their names were entered in a synodikon, among them the monk Silvester. A Valaam monk of the nineteenth century saw, near the hermitage of Abbot Nazarius, a procession of black-⁠robed monks, bloodied and covered with wounds, who sang funeral prayers in the old chant and vanished into the thicket without trampling the grass. On the day of their death, each year, the Liturgy for their repose was served. At the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000 they were numbered among the saints of the Russian Church, for veneration throughout it.

Silvester is commemorated, in the new style, on 5 March (a movable date), on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia and on 22 August (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.