Russian saints revered by the entire church or locally

May, June, July, August • September, October, November, December “Let him not lie in the world” Words of St. Dimitry Rostov. There is no need to talk a lot about the need to bring to light the lives of the husbands and wives of the Russian Church who lived to the grave for the glory of the name of God. Just respect for the great already obliges us to get acquainted with and introduce the great. Glorifying the saints in this way is a holy thing. But you need the ability to perform a holy work. “Let us not lie against a saint,” repeated the saint. Demetrius, when he wrote the lives of the saints. The rule is sacred for everyone who touches the saints with a pen or brush. A lie in a sacred matter is in itself indecent and out of place. It can also harm people's hearts. Western legends did a lot of damage to the Western Church in its fight against the Reformation: they thought to exalt the saints by bringing into life their unprecedented miracles and deeds, but by doing so they only insulted the saints and gave reason not to believe in the legends and reality. - Condemnation pronounced by St. church over the story of cleric Vasily about St. Euphrosyne shows that the Orthodox Church does not tolerate lies and fabrications in stories about saints, as it soon reveals them. Therefore, discernment in trust in old monuments when describing saints is more necessary than when describing civil events. Previous stories about the saints of the Russian Church were written - few by contemporaries, many - by later people, moreover, written by people of different talents and different education. To repeat all these stories indiscriminately, without verification, is a sin before a clear conscience and a shame before an enlightened mind. – We will not offend the old storytellers if we replace the late, unjustified news with news from other, more ancient monuments. This will be a service to truth, which everyone must respect. Saints are recognized as saints not by the will of people, but by the will of heaven. – Therefore, one must be careful not to place among the saints persons who are not recognized as saints by the church. In this regard, the “Description of Russian saints, where and in which city - live and perform miracles”, according to three lists of it, served as a guide for us: according to the list of the Moscow Theological Academy and according to two lists of Moscow. history societies No. 212 and 231. The most complete of them in terms of the number of persons is the second list of the society, but older and more accurate according to the news is the list of the academy. The description was compiled at the end of the 17th century. It is clear in itself that this description had to be verified by other monuments, and with a clear conscience we declare that for almost all the persons included in this description, acts of spiritual administration with instructions or news of their ecclesiastical veneration were found. Recently, two more copies of the “book containing all Russian saints” were delivered to us from Novgorod. One of them, with the briefest descriptions of this or that person, and sometimes with only names, was recently copied from a well-known text. Another “written from the birth of Christ, June 1718, 20 days,” according to the inscription, belongs to the Oten monastery, and was donated “from a zealous person for the benefit of all the brethren, for reading.” This list is similar to the list of general ist. No. 231, but not in everything. It shows an effort for better expressions and greater fidelity to history; It is not uncommon to see notes: “there is no service, but there is a troparion,” or there is a service, or the relics are hidden. – This is especially evident when describing the saints of “Great Novgorod”. For example, “St. Luke was laid behind St. Sophia: his relics were found in fol. 7066 (1558) March 28 and brought to the cathedral church of St. Sophia and placed in the Martyrian porch... St. Simeon the Archbishop - laid in the Martyrian porch next to the Archbishop Martyria, the relics are hidden." About Polycarp of Bryansk: "Venerable Polycarp, hegumen of the Spassky monastery, also in Bryansk, reposed in the year 7007 (1499) February in the 23rd day." In the Otensky list, the preface speaks about the saints: “from them they are testified by the conciliar and their memory is celebrated by the Holy Church in the summer and their relics taken from the top of the earth rest visible to everyone, but they rest in hiding, both in the miracles that have shone in memory of their holy church, not giving in to celebrating outside (read everywhere), but only where they were buried are their saints And with their services you honor not others who shone gloriously in miracles, but with little recognition from their life or from miracles, but they also pleased God and worked diligently from the heart and received crowns of honor from Him against their labors. benefits to pious and Orthodox Christians." This preface is not found in other lists known to us. We have no doubt that there will be other lists of “books about Russian saints”. But from what was found, it is obvious that this book was considered useful and worthy of general use both in Moscow and Novgorod, the main centers of Russian life at that time, and those who respect the memory of their ancestors will not speak humiliatingly about it. In order to reject sinful rumors, the writer considers it necessary to note that he began to collect information about Russian saints from the very year when the “Dictionary of the Glorified Saints in the Russian Church” was published. St. Petersburg 1836, i.e. 20 years before the famous “lives of the saints of the Russian Church” began to be published. He can also show the distrustful a copy of the dictionary, bound at that time with white sheets, but now covered with writing at different times. From that time on, he collected notes while reading chronicles and handwritten lives that he came across in different libraries. Regarding the elders of the lives, it must be said that some of them were corrected and supplemented more than once. The writer does not consider it necessary to point out different editions of this or that life every time, nor does he point out all the lists of lives that it happened to be read to him. His instructions are most often limited to libraries where everyone can easily believe the words of the author - the libraries of Tolstoy, Rumyantsev, Tsarsky. This is said in order to reject unfair conclusions that others, perhaps, hasten to allow themselves, not to the honor of their person. For example, Callistratus’s life of rights. Juliana was delivered to the writer in a list where, as is noticeable, Callistratus himself added news of some posthumous miracles. The writer repeats once again that he does not consider his work sinless. In order for the lives of Russian saints to be compiled in the most perfect form possible, local research about them is necessary. On this subject, he suggested that whoever should publish ancient lives (but not new ones) of the northern saints at the St. Petersburg Academy, central Russia at the Moscow Academy, southern at the Kyiv Academy, eastern at the Kazan Academy, so that the publications were accompanied by critical research. As a result of this, if we are not mistaken, ancient lives began to be published at the Kazan Academy. If in other places they consider it better to do something else instead, this is no longer a matter of our conscience. From ancient lives, the writer tried to retain all the historical features of the saint or his time. But such words as: “from a young age he withdrew from children’s games,” or “from his youth he learned piety,” etc., will be found in almost every life, and therefore it is a mistake to pass them off as historical features, whereas these are only the techniques of a later biographer. The writer considers it a mistake to repeat now those techniques of biographers that seemed edifying in their time and which now can only serve as a temptation. The author does not consider obligatory for himself the explanations that the late biographer gave to certain incidents or his personal reflections. The life of the present time should be written in such a way that it is instructive and edifying for the people of the present time. - In this conviction, the writer passed some of the biographers' news in silence and supplemented the ancient legends with such news that the ancients do not even hint about, or with reflections that later times evoke. The writer will be sincerely grateful for practical indications of the shortcomings of his work: and for ineffective ones he will only fraternally regret their author, since they would not serve to the honor of the author; He does not intend to enter into an argument with anyone over personal opinions. Let everyone act according to their conscience, not forgetting that we all must give an account to the world judge, the Lord Jesus. What is possible with the diligence and strength of one is done. We do not consider all other accessories of a useful description of saints as important as fidelity to the truth. That’s why we don’t touch on them here, although we tried, to the best of our ability, to preserve them in our description: “If you have sinned in anything, forgive, and do not curse.”