Titus of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Titus of Valaam, a hieromonk, is named first in the synodikon of the monks and servants killed by the Swedes at Valaam in 1578. The monastery, close to the border between Novgorod and Sweden, had been plundered several times by the Swedes. In the time of King John III, a band of soldiers only recently turned Lutheran, pursuing Orthodox Karelians, crossed the ice from the mainland to the island and attacked the monastery.

On 20 February 1578 eighteen 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", entered a synodikon later kept at the Vasilievsky Monastery, and there the hieromonk Titus is the first to be named, followed by the schema monk Tikhon, the monks Gelasius, Sergius, Barlaam and others, and the novices Athanasius, Anthony, Luke and the rest. The attacks of the Swedes went on, and on Valaam there is no stone untouched by the blood of the ascetics.

In the nineteenth century a monk of Valaam saw, near the hermitage of Hegumen Nazarius, unknown monks walking in two rows out of the thicket, singing the old melody of the burial service; their faces were radiant, but they were spattered with blood and covered with wounds. 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 Liturgy and a common memorial service for their repose were celebrated every year at Valaam.

They were numbered among the saints by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church. Saint Titus 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.