Simeon Kulyamin

Holy Hieromartyr Simeon Kulyamin was a deacon at the church of the Holy Trinity in the settlement of Udelnaya near Moscow, and he was shot at Butovo on 28 February 1938 with the priest Alexis Nikitsky.

Simeon (Semyon Feodorovich Kulyamin) was born on 1 September 1874 in the village of Rotmirovo, Vladimir district, in the family of the peasant Feodor Kulyamin. At eleven he went as an apprentice to a textile factory, then for almost twenty-⁠eight years worked as a gardener for the manufacturer Losev. In 1921 he entered as psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Holy Trinity in Udelnaya, and in 1925 he was ordained deacon for the same church. In 1934 Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), retired because of age, settled in the settlement, and all the clergy of the church went to his house on the great feasts to serve molebens, since for reasons of health the venerable hierarch could not go to church. On 20 November 1937 the metropolitan was arrested and on 11 December shot.

On 26 January 1938 Deacon Simeon was arrested with the priest Alexis Nikitsky and imprisoned at Taganka. Questioned the next day about the ties among the churchmen of Udelnaya, he answered that serving together had drawn them close, and that their tie consisted in this, that as believers of conviction they had done all they could to keep the Udelnaya church, to keep it from being closed, and to spread faith among the people. Of a meeting held on 2 May 1937 in the apartment of Metropolitan Chichagov to discuss the Stalinist constitution, he said that he had indeed been there, with three others, invited by the metropolitan, and they had served a Paschal molieben, but no meeting had been held and the constitution had not been discussed. He denied any counter-⁠revolutionary activity. On 7 February 1938 the inquiry closed, on 16 February the priest and deacon were sentenced to death, and on 28 February 1938 they were shot and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo.

He is commemorated on 28 February and, in the new style, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.