Tryphon of Vyatka

Venerable Tryphon of Vyatka (in the world Trofim Dmitrievich Podvizaev) was an archimandrite, a missionary, and the founder and abbot of the Dormition Monastery of Saint Tryphon in Khlynov (today Kirov). He is among the saints specially venerated in the dioceses of Vyatka and Perm. He was born around 1546 and reposed on 8 October 1612 by the old calendar (21 October by the new). One of the sources states that the Russian Church canonized him in 1903. Since 2007 the Synaxis of the Saints of Vyatka has also been celebrated on his day. The English source gives 12 October as the day of his commemoration, which does not agree with the other sources.

He was born in the village of Malaya Nemnyuzhka, in the Pinega district (today in Arkhangelsk region), into a well-⁠off peasant family, the youngest son of Dimitry and Pelagia Podvizaev. At baptism he was given the name Trophimos. His father died early, and he was brought up under the guidance of his mother and older brothers. From childhood he was a devout man.

Having a desire for monastic life, he left home in secret and settled at Veliky Ustyug, with the parish priest John, where he lived in fasting and prayer. Then he went to the Pyskor monastery on the river Kama, in the Perm region, where he was tonsured a monk by Abbot Barlaam and where, according to one of the sources, he worked to bring pagans to Christianity. Later, seeking solitude, he went to the river Chusovaya and founded there a monastery in honour of the Dormition of the Mother of God. In 1580 he moved to the town of Khlynov, where he founded another monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God on the river Vyatka, known today as the Tryphon Monastery. He was raised to the rank of archimandrite of the monastery he had founded. He was a strict ascetic: he wore a hair shirt and chains on his body.

He reposed on 8 October 1612 and was buried in the monastery he had founded. On 2 June 1684, while a stone cathedral of the Dormition was being built, the relics of Venerable Tryphon of Vyatka were found. They lie in the Tryphon Dormition Monastery in Kirov.