Simeon of Verkhoturye

Saint Simeon of Verkhoturye, also called Simeon of Merkushino, was a devout layman of the seventeenth century, of noble birth, who hid his origins and lived in voluntary poverty in the villages of the Urals. He reposed around 1642, and half a century after his death his body was found incorrupt. The Russian Church honours him as the patron of the Ural region for his humility, his freedom from greed, and his mercy, and for the wonders worked at his relics.

The source of his life

Very little is known about Saint Simeon's life. Everything comes from a single work written at the end of the seventeenth century by Metropolitan Ignatius (Rimsky-⁠Korsakov) of Tobolsk and Siberia, from the recollections of those who had known him. The metropolitan wrote it after examining the newly found relics himself, under the title "A Story Known and Witnessed of the Manifestation of the Precious Relics, and in Part an Account of the Miracles of the Holy and Righteous Simeon, the New Wonderworker of Siberia".

A hidden life at Merkushino

According to this account, Simeon was born around 1607 into a boyar family in European Russia, but his parents' names have not survived. After his parents died during the Time of Troubles, he came to the Urals and settled first at Verkhoturye. In 1620 he moved to the village of Merkushino, about 53 kilometres east of Verkhoturye. There and in the surrounding area he spent most of his life, concealing his birth.

In the village he attended the wooden church of the Holy Archangel Michael. In summer he withdrew to pray on the bank of the Tura River, some ten versts from Merkushino, living on the fish he caught. The stone on which he liked to sit while fishing has been preserved.

In winter he sewed fur coats for the peasants of the villages of the Verkhoturye district. Village tailors did not work at home as in the towns, but went to the houses of those who hired them. Simeon sewed chiefly coats trimmed with leather and worked by preference for poor people, from whom he usually took no payment.

He considered the food and shelter he received while working to be reward enough. To avoid being paid, he would sometimes leave a garment unfinished and leave the village. He preached obedience and humility, and even in his lifetime he was regarded as a righteous man for his ascetic life and honesty. He showed a new kind of holiness, that of willingly descending to the life of the simplest people.

Simeon also preached the Christian faith among the pagan Voguls of the region, known today as the Mansi. An old man who had known him later described him as a good and virtuous man, from the Russian towns and of noble birth, a tailor by trade, obedient and helpful, diligent in prayer and at church, but suffering from a stomach ailment.

His repose

Simeon died at Merkushino, according to handwritten calendars in the year 7150 from the creation of the world, that is, between September 1641 and August 1642. By other reckonings his death may have occurred as late as 1659. He was buried in the cemetery beside the church of the Archangel Michael in the village.

The finding of the relics

In 1692 Simeon's coffin rose of itself out of the ground, so that his remains could be seen. The villagers took this as a sign of holiness, but they no longer remembered the name of the man buried there. Reports of healings began to spread, especially of skin diseases cured with earth from the grave.

In 1693 the bishop of Siberia sent a cleric named Matthew to Merkushino to investigate the miracles. After his report, Metropolitan Ignatius ordered a small wooden cover to be built over the grave. On 18 December 1694, at the metropolitan's command, Hegumen Isaac of the Dalmatov Monastery and other clergy examined the relics and questioned those who had been healed. Some sources date this examination to 1695.

The hegumen reported that the body had been found whole, apart from the fingers of one hand and the clothing, and that a sweet fragrance came from it. The metropolitan, arriving the next day, was doubtful. The Life says that he was then struck with a pain in his eye, which he took as a punishment for his unbelief, and he examined the relics himself. In the coffin he found the bones tightly covered with flesh and the garments decayed, and the relics were declared incorrupt.

The saint's name

Asking the people about the man buried there, the metropolitan learned from a seventy-⁠year-⁠old man named Athanasius what was remembered of his life, but not his name. Leaving the village, Ignatius fell asleep on the road and, according to the Life, saw in a dream a crowd of people saying that the righteous man's name was Simeon.

He stopped at the Monastery of Saint Nicholas and told his dream to Archimandrites Sergius and Alexander and to Hegumen Isaac. They judged the vision to be a divine revelation, and the metropolitan ordered that the newly revealed saint be called Simeon.

On 30 December 1694 Ignatius came again to Merkushino, examined the relics a second time, moved them into the church, and covered the coffin with a silk pall. He ordered testimony about the righteous man's life to be gathered, and from it he composed the Life and the akathist of Saint Simeon.

Translation to Verkhoturye

The governor of Verkhoturye, Alexei Kaletin, and the head of customs, Pyotr Khudyakov, asked Metropolitan Philotheus on behalf of the townspeople to allow the relics to be brought to the town. The relics were placed in a new cedar coffin, carved on the outside and lined with leather and swan's down. The old coffin remained at Merkushino and later burned together with the church of the Archangel Michael.

On 12 September 1704 the relics were brought to the Monastery of Saint Nicholas in Verkhoturye and placed in the church of the Protection of the Mother of God, by the right choir. Tradition links this translation with the miraculous halting of the procession at the prayer of the fool for Christ Cosmas, a lame man who wished to rest. In 1716 the church burned, but the shrine with the relics was untouched.

The site of the grave at Merkushino was also venerated, especially after a spring began to flow there. A wooden chapel stood over it, replaced in 1808 with one of stone.

Veneration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

In 1798 an official, Alexei Turchaninov, and his wife Felitsata had a silvered copper shrine made, with inscriptions recording the dates of the manifestation and translation of the relics. In 1838 the shrine was placed in the chapel of Saints Simeon the God-⁠Receiver and Anna the Prophetess, which in 1863 was rededicated to Saint Simeon of Verkhoturye.

In 1846, with gifts from merchants of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye, a new silver shrine was made on six gilded feet. The lid showed the saint between two angels, and the sides depicted the translation of the relics and Simeon praying in the forest beside his fishing nets. One inscription dated the finding of the relics to 1682, and another their translation to 1704.

In 1886 the Brotherhood of the Holy Righteous Simeon was founded in Yekaterinburg for the enlightenment of the people. It maintained nearly three hundred schools with more than ten thousand pupils, supported missionaries, and from 1901 had a fund for the poor and for those returning from schism and the sects.

The cathedral and the imperial gift

In the early twentieth century up to sixty thousand pilgrims a year came to the relics. For this reason the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross was built in the monastery in 1913, to hold eight to ten thousand people. It was consecrated in the year of the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty, and on that day a telegram from the imperial family arrived from Livadia asking for the community's prayers at the saint's shrine.

In 1914 the imperial family gave a carved silver canopy for the saint's shrine, modelled on the prayer throne of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the Dormition Cathedral of the Kremlin. It was carried from Yekaterinburg to Verkhoturye in a procession lasting twenty days, with thousands of pilgrims walking more than 350 kilometres. In May 1914 the relics were moved into the new cathedral.

The relics in the years of persecution

After the revolution, on 17 August 1918, the Bolshevik commission of inquiry opened the shrine for the first time. Archimandrite Xenophon, the abbot, calmed the outraged faithful, and on that occasion only the coverings were removed from the relics. In September 1918 the town passed to Kolchak's White army.

In June 1919, as the Whites retreated, the monks hid the relics and other treasures in the monastery and its skete and took only the silver shrine with them. A few of them, led by Hegumen Abercius, stopped at the Krasnoselsky convent, and in February 1920 they returned with the shrine to Verkhoturye.

On 25 September 1920, the saint's feast, when some fifteen thousand pilgrims had gathered at the monastery, the authorities opened the shrine again as part of the anti-⁠religious campaign. Archimandrite Xenophon told the faithful that the opening took nothing from the holiness of the relics and, with the brethren, carried out the shrine and laid the relics on a table. Two hours later permission was given to return them, but the precious shrine was confiscated, supposedly for the starving. In 1924 a health commission sealed the coffin and restricted access to the relics.

On 30 May 1929 the relics were removed from the monastery and taken to the museum in Nizhny Tagil for anti-⁠religious propaganda. A Soviet journal complained in 1935 that the room where they were displayed felt more like a place of prayer. The museum's director was arrested and died in a labour camp. The relics were then moved to the anti-⁠religious museum in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, and from 1946 to the storerooms of the regional museum as an exhibit. In 1947 Bishop Tobias of Sverdlovsk asked for their return but received no answer.

Return of the relics and veneration today

On 11 April 1989 the relics were returned to the Church and placed in the Church of the All-⁠Merciful Saviour in Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg. On 25 September 1992 the greater part of them was taken to the restored and reconsecrated Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross at the Monastery of Saint Nicholas in Verkhoturye, where they rest today.

Saint Simeon of Verkhoturye is venerated as the patron of the Urals. He is commemorated on 18 December (31 December New Style), the day of his glorification, and on 12 September (25 September New Style), the day of the first translation of his relics, as well as in spring for the second translation and in the synaxes of the Saints of Yekaterinburg and the Saints of Siberia. The faithful ask his help in illnesses of body and soul, especially diseases of the eyes and paralysis.