Spruce Island: New Valaam

The heart of St. Herman’s life: the hermitage he named New Valaam, on the small spruce-covered island off Kodiak where he spent his last decades. Here the two threads of his sanctity meet — an extreme personal asceticism hidden under a worn deerskin smock, and an unwearied care for the orphaned Aleut children he gathered, fed, and taught.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (glorified by the OCA and ROCOR, 1970)

Sometime between roughly 1808 and 1818 — the exact year is unrecorded — Herman withdrew from Kodiak to Spruce Island and established the hermitage he called New Valaam, after the monastery of his formation, remaining a simple, unordained monk to the end. The two files present, first, the hermitage and ascetic regimen as the Valaam Life attests them — the cave, the deerskin smock, the roughly sixteen-pound chains worn unseen, the wooden-board bed, the refusal of rank — and, second, the pastoral household gathered around him: the school and orphanage, his disciple Sophia Vlasova, the Sunday catechesis, the island spring, and his guarded relations with the priests who came to Kodiak in his final years. For the outward dimension of the same life — his defense of the native peoples against the Company — see Defender of the Aleuts.

Section Contents

• New Valaam — the hermitage (c. 1808–1818, sources differ), the cell and wooden-board bed, the deerskin clothing and ~16-pound chains as attested in the Life, the garden and ascetic regimen, and his refusal of ordination and higher rank
• Orphanage and Flock — the school for orphaned Aleut children, Sophia Vlasova as his helper, the Sunday gatherings and catechesis, the spring tradition, care during the epidemics, and his relations with the later clergy (Fr. Frumenty Mordovsky)

See Also

• Conflict with the Company — the advocacy his unordained freedom made possible
• Yanovsky Correspondence — the witness who described this ascetic life
• Recorded Sayings — the words preserved from these years
• The 1867 Valaam Life — the source of nearly all these details
• The 1794 Valaam Mission to Kodiak — the mission Herman outlived

References

• The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska (1867 Valaam Life), in Little Russian Philokalia, vol. 3. St. Herman Press. Online: orthochristian.com/47984.html.
• Canadian Orthodox History Project. “Saint Herman of Alaska.” orthodoxcanada.ca.
• Orthodox Church in America. “Chronology of the Life of St. Herman of Alaska.” oca.org.
• Saint Herman of Alaska the Wonderworker. fatheralexander.org.
• Korsun, Sergei, and Lydia Black. Herman: A Wilderness Saint. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2012.