Theognostus Pivovarov

Holy Venerable Martyr Theognostus Pivovarov, a hieromonk, received the crown of martyrdom in 1921, shot by soldiers of the Red Army at the Kyzyl-⁠Zhar skete, near the city of Verny, today Almaty. He is remembered together with the other venerable martyrs of Verny: Seraphim, Pachomius, Anatoly, Heraclius, Victor and Evdokia.

The Issyk-⁠Kul Monastery

Theognostus, like Seraphim and Anatoly, came from the Glinsk Hermitage in the diocese of Kursk, and was called at the beginning of the twentieth century to the Holy Trinity Monastery at Issyk-⁠Kul, founded by Bishop Alexander of Turkestan as a missionary beacon for the nomads of Asia. They are known to have been learned monks of high ascetic life. Father Seraphim had a talent for icon painting and a fine voice, Father Anatoly was a remarkable singer and choir director, and Father Theognostus had good gifts for administration.

Seraphim and Anatoly were called in 1909 to the city of Verny and received priestly ordination there. Theognostus, Heraclius and Pachomius remained at Issyk-⁠Kul until 1919. In that year Father Theognostus was confirmed there as overseer of order (blagochinny) of the monastery and assistant confessor for the laity. After the attack of the Kyrgyz on the monastery in 1916, many aged monks were tortured; in 1919 the monastery was closed.

The skete in the mountains

After the Bolsheviks came to power in March 1918 and Bishop Pimen was shot (commemorated on 3 September), the monks withdrew into the mountains. They made a skete eight versts from the city, and then, seeking a more solitary place, found the mountain Kyzyl-⁠Zhar, where they set up cells, dug caves and set a Holy Table. The confessor of the skete was Hieromonk Seraphim Bogoslovsky. He was born in Glukhov in the 1870s, with the name Alexander, to a father who was steward to a landowner and a gentle and pious mother. His mother received from God the knowledge that her son would die a martyr, and when he was a schoolboy she wept as she told him so. She also said once that, while he sang church hymns, she saw a crown above his head and angels with him. These words sank deep into his soul, and when he grew up he left for the Glinsk Hermitage.

Martyrdom

In 1921 three Red Army soldiers came on horseback, with guns, to the Kyzyl-⁠Zhar skete. Father Seraphim gave them tea and put them to bed. He did not sleep but read his prayer rule. Toward dawn the soldiers came up to him, put a gun to his back and fired. He had time to cry out the name of Anatoly. Then the soldiers went along the path to Father Theognostus, who usually prayed at night in a cave. Perhaps worn out by the night's prayer, he had lain down to rest in his cell, and as he lay, with his arms crossed on his breast, they shot him in the heart.

The next day the militia came, examined the place and allowed the burial. They dug a grave, covered it with boards and, without coffins, buried them wrapped in their mantles. Later Hieromonk Anatoly sang the funeral service for them on the Shaggy Hill. Father Pachomius, Father Heraclius and Father Anatoly did not remain in the skete.

The other martyrs of Verny

Of the others the page says this. The schemamonk Heraclius died of illness in 1937, on the eve of the feast of the Ascension, having been told of his end beforehand. Hieromonk Pachomius was arrested in 1935, imprisoned at Alma-⁠Ata and shot in 1936. The wanderer Victor died a martyr around 1936 to 1937. Anatoly left for Sukhumi, into the mountains, and was shot in the early 1930s. The nun Evdokia, of the Iveron-⁠Seraphim convent, was killed in September 1918, when a Red detachment shot the nuns accused of counterrevolution by the peasant tenants of the convent's farm.

Veneration

The grave of the venerable martyrs Seraphim and Theognostus in the Aksai gorge has always been honoured by the faithful. In 1991 a worship cross was set up on it, then a chapel, and many healings and wonders are known. On the site of the Kyzyl-⁠Zhar skete a monastery for monks has now opened, the Aksai Hermitage of Saints Seraphim and Theognostus. They were glorified in 1993 as saints of local veneration in the Alma-⁠Ata diocese and numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000. Theognostus is commemorated on 11 August and on 8 September.