Theophan Ilminsky

Saint Theophan (in the world Sergei Petrovich Ilmensky, 1867-1918) the hieromartyr was bishop of Solikamsk, vicar of the diocese of Perm, killed by the Bolsheviks at Perm on 24 December 1918; he was the last bishop consecrated in the time of Tsar Nicholas II and was numbered among the saints by the Council of Bishops in 2000, together with the priests and laypeople killed with him. He is commemorated on 11 December (24 December in the new style).

Childhood and studies

He was born in the village of Akatnaya Maza, Khvalynsk district, Saratov governorate, in the family of the local psalm-⁠reader Pyotr Ilmensky. His father soon died, and the widow, Anna Timofeevna Ilmenskaya (née Alekseevskaya), moved with her son to the village of Sodom, where her younger brother, Archpriest Dimitry Alekseevsky, served as priest. Later he recalled: "From earliest childhood I grew up an orphan in the care of my mother, a deeply religious, gentle and humble woman, who told me much of the life of Venerable Sergius, whose name I bore, and in the care of my uncle-⁠educator, who took the place of a father, a gentle and humble village pastor, who served fifty years in the same remote backwater village. With him I learned to share with the people both joy and grief, to meet the church feasts of the Nativity of Christ and Holy Pascha." In 1882 he graduated from the Saratov theological school and entered the Saratov theological seminary. He told afterwards: "In the seminary my wish to become a priest not only did not pass, but, under the influence of a wonderful book, 'Letters on the Duties of the Holy Order', from which I do not part even now, ripened into an unshakeable resolve to be a priest, and in a village at that." He graduated from the seminary in 1888 and entered the Kazan Theological Academy. In his fourth year he presented a work on "Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, as a Preacher", praised by his teachers. He graduated from the Academy in 1892, fifth among twenty-⁠four graduates.

Marriage and priesthood

He was a teacher of pedagogy at the Saratov diocesan girls' school, with a salary of 600 roubles a year. There he met his future wife, Olimpiada Ivanovna Leplevskaya, from the family of a priest of the village of Novoe Chirkovo. They married at the cathedral of John the Baptist in Volsk on 11 September 1894. On 29 October 1895 a daughter, Maria, was born to them. Later he was widowed. He was appointed teacher of religion at the Saratov Alexander-⁠Mariinsky real school and was ordained deacon and priest by Bishop Nicholas (Nalimov) of Saratov; he was a cleric of the Saratov cathedral and counted among its preachers. From 1895 to 1907 he was also rector of the house church of the real school. For his pastoral labours he received the epigonation (1896), a velvet skufia (1899), the kamilavka (1903), a golden pectoral cross (1905) and the Bible from the Holy Synod (1906). He was chairman of the council of the diocesan girls' school, then teacher of religion and rector of the church of Saint Mary Magdalene at the Mariinsky Institute for noble girls. At the end of 1909 the Imperial University opened at Saratov, and he published a welcoming article, "Thoughts and Feelings of a Church Pastor on the Day of the Opening of the University". On 6 May 1911 he was raised to archpriest, and on 4 September of the same year became editor of the "Saratov Spiritual Herald".

Monk and bishop

He entered the brotherhood of Valaam monastery, was superintendent of the Balashov theological school and in the same year was tonsured a monk and raised to archimandrite. He was rector of the Perm theological seminary. In the cathedral of the Transfiguration at Perm he was consecrated bishop of Solikamsk, vicar of the Perm diocese, by Bishops Andronik (Nikolsky) of Perm, Paul of Glazov, Gabriel of Barnaul, Methodius of Petropavlovsk and Seraphim of Chelyabinsk, before twelve archimandrites, archpriests and priests. He was given the staff of Saint Stephen of Perm. During Archbishop Andronik's stay at the Local Council, in August-⁠December 1917 and January-⁠April 1918, Bishop Theophan governed the diocese. He led at Perm an unprecedentedly large procession, organized because of the persecution of the Church. Back at Solikamsk, he opposed the nationalization of church property. When in 1918 the volost land department "asked" the Holy Trinity monastery at Solikamsk to send the plans of the hayfields, to be taken, the bishop answered that whoever dared to seize for any purpose the lands and any property of the Church of God would stand before the Dread Judgment of Almighty God, and that without the permission of Bishop Andronik he had no right to send the plans. Contemporaries bore witness to him as a great man of prayer and fasting, a simple, open pastor attentive to people's needs, a fearless rebuker of godlessness.

Martyrdom

On 22 June 1918, after the arrest and execution of Archbishop Andronik, he took over the governance of the Perm diocese. At the end of summer he was arrested. On 1 July 1918, at the all-⁠night vigil, he gave a sermon on the arrest and killing by the Bolsheviks at Usolye of the priest Mikhail Nakaryakov and held a memorial service for him, commemorating him in the service as a hieromartyr. Then he called to him Father Mikhail's son, Nikolai, a deacon at the Holy Trinity church in Perm, and said: "In memory of your martyr father you will be ordained priest. Go after your father." According to Archimandrite Chrysanthus (Klementiev), this very incident gave the Bolsheviks the occasion to begin the persecution of Bishop Theophan. On 24 December 1918, a few days before the occupation of Perm by the troops of Admiral Kolchak, he was killed by the Bolsheviks, after being subjected to cruel torments. The Chekists stripped the bishop and in thirty-⁠degree frost repeatedly plunged him into an ice hole of the river Kama; his body was covered with ice two fingers thick, but the martyr was still alive. Then the executioners simply drowned him. Two priests and five laymen were drowned with him.

Veneration

Bishop Theophan's name was entered in the draft list of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in the preparation of the canonization carried out by the Russian Church Outside Russia in 1981, but the list was published only at the end of the 1990s. At the Council of Bishops of 2000 the hieromartyr Theophan and the priests and laymen killed with him were numbered among the saints. On 24-25 December 2005, in Perm, "Theophan Readings" were held in the saint's memory on the theme "Spiritual Education in the Perm Region: History, Present, Prospects".