The Hierarch-Martyrs
The martyred bishops and the clergy and laity who died with them. This section treats the hierarch-martyrs — Vladimir of Kiev, Veniamin of Petrograd, Peter of Krutitsy the locum tenens, Kirill of Kazan — who bore the persecution at the head of the Church, and then the far larger, mostly unnamed body of parish priests, deacons, monastics, and lay believers who made up the great mass of the New Martyrs.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox
Overview
The persecution struck the Church from the top down and from the bottom up at once, and this section treats both the summit and the base of the martyred Church.
The first file, The Martyred Bishops, gathers the hierarch-martyrs (sviashchennomucheniki of episcopal rank): Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev, the first hierarch to fall (1918); Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd, killed in the 1922 valuables campaign; Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky), the patriarchal locum tenens shot in 1937 after a decade in prison; and Metropolitan Kirill of Kazan, Patriarch Tikhon’s designated first candidate for the locum tenens, shot the same year. The bishops mattered out of proportion to their numbers, because to destroy the episcopate is to attack the Church’s very structure.
The second file, The Priest and Lay Martyrs, turns to the great mass: the parish clergy who would not abandon their churches, the monastics, and the laity — the ordinary believers who form the overwhelming majority of the New Martyrs and of whom most are known only as names in an archive, if at all.
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-martyred-bishops.md | Vladimir of Kiev, Veniamin of Petrograd, Peter of Krutitsy (locum tenens), Kirill of Kazan, and the martyred episcopate |
| the-priest-and-lay-martyrs.md | The parish clergy, monastics, and laity; representative documented cases and the mostly-unnamed multitude |
See Also
- The Persecution, 1917–1941 — the events in which the hierarchs died
- The Confessors — the bishops who survived
- Butovo and the Killing Fields — where many were shot
References
- Pospielovsky, Dimitry. The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982. 2 vols. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.