Tikhon of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Tikhon of Valaam, a schema monk, is one of the monks and novices slain by the Swedes in 1578. Throughout the centuries the monastery of Valaam, close to the border between Novgorod and Sweden, was plundered many times. In the time of King John III, a band of soldiers recently turned Lutheran, pursuing Orthodox Karelians, crossed the ice from the mainland to the island and attacked the monastery. On 20 February 1578 eighteen blessed elders and sixteen novices were put to death for their steadfastness in the Orthodox faith.

Their names, with the note that they were "killed by the Germans at Valaam, elders and servants", entered a synodikon later kept at the Vasilievsky Monastery. In it are written, among others, the hieromonk Titus, the schema monk Tikhon, the monks Gelasius, Sergius, Barlaam, Sabbas and Conon, and the novices Athanasius, Anthony, Luke and Leontius. The attacks of the Swedes went on, and on Valaam, it is said, there is no stone that has not been marked by the blood of the ascetics.

In the nineteenth century a monk of Valaam, near the hermitage of Hegumen Nazarius, had a vision of unknown black-⁠robed monks walking in two rows out of the green thicket, singing the funeral prayers in the ancient chant. Their faces were radiant and gentle, but they were spattered with blood and covered with wounds. They vanished into the thicket as they had come, and the echo of the singing lingered long in the air. With the blessing of Hegumen Damascene, on the day of the martyrdom of the thirty-⁠four, 20 February (4 March in the new style), the Divine Liturgy and a common memorial service for their repose were celebrated each year at Valaam.

They were numbered among the saints by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church. Saint Tikhon is commemorated 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, in the new style.