Adrian of Poshekhonye
Our Venerable Father and Martyr Adrian, Abbot of Poshekhonye
Venerable Martyr · Wonderworker · Priest · b. late 15th century, at Rostov the Great — d. 5 March 1550, at the Dormition monastery of Poshekhonye
Commemorated 5 March — Martyrdom by robbers, 1550
Adrian of Poshekhonye (†1550) was a Russian monk, iconographer, and monastic founder, and a venerable-martyr. A disciple of Cornelius of Komel — under whom he was tonsured and learned the painting of icons — he was led, after his master's death, by a mysterious elder to a remote place in the forests of Poshekhonye near Yaroslavl, where in 1540 he and the elder Leonid settled and founded a monastery dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God. Ordained priest and made abbot by Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, he governed the house in strict observance and continued to paint icons, keeping a hermitage for solitude a little way off. On 5 March 1550, during Great Lent, armed robbers broke into the monastery seeking its money, beat him, and killed him. His relics were found incorrupt in 1626, and many miracles were worked at his grave; the monastery he founded bore his name thereafter.
Formation under Cornelius of Komel
Adrian was born at Rostov the Great, of pious parents named (in the tradition) Gregory and Irene, in the years around the turn of the sixteenth century. He embraced the monastic life at the celebrated monastery of Cornelius of Komel in the Vologda forests — one of the great nurseries of Russian monasticism, a community of skilled builders and iconographers — where he received the tonsure and was trained, among other things, in the painting of icons, an art he practised to the end of his life. He was in time ordained hierodeacon. When his master Cornelius reposed (in 1537), Adrian, like many of that monastery's disciples, was drawn toward the founding of a new house in the wilderness.
The founding of the Poshekhonye monastery
The tradition gives the founding a marked providential character. There came to the Komel monastery, it relates, a certain unknown elder of striking appearance, who told Adrian of a remote and fitting place for a monastery in the forests to the north; and with his superior's blessing Adrian set out, taking with him the elder Leonid and an icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God which he had painted with his own hand. On 13 September 1540 they reached the wild place in the district of Poshekhonye, near the river Vetka in the Yaroslavl land, and there settled amid great hardship. After some three years Adrian journeyed to Moscow, where the Metropolitan Macarius approved the foundation, ordained him to the priesthood, and raised him to the rank of igumen (abbot); on 31 May 1543 the church was founded, with its refectory, in honour of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, and the monastery took shape around it. Adrian ruled it in strict cenobitic observance, continued to paint icons, and kept for himself a hermitage about a verst from the monastery, that he might withdraw for deeper solitude.
Martyrdom
On 5 March 1550, in the season of Great Lent, a band of armed robbers fell upon the monastery. Believing that the community had hidden away money and treasure, they seized the abbot, beat and tortured him to make him give up the supposed hoard, and, when nothing was yielded, killed him — the tradition says they strangled him — and carried off what little they could find. So the founder of Poshekhonye died a martyr's death at the hands of brigands, in his own monastery, in the midst of the Lenten fast; and the Church numbers him among the venerable-martyrs (преподобномученики), the monastic saints who were slain.
Relics
The martyr's body, hidden or cast aside by his murderers, lay long unknown, until his relics were discovered — found incorrupt — on 17 December 1626, more than seventy years after his death. From that finding a stream of miracles was reported at his grave, and his veneration spread through the Yaroslavl country and beyond; the monastery he had founded, the Adrianov Dormition monastery, kept his memory and his relics as its treasure.
Feast and commemoration
Adrian of Poshekhonye is commemorated on March 5 (church date; New Calendar civil March 5; Old Calendar civil March 18), the day of his martyrdom in 1550, a commemoration of the Russian Church. The finding of his relics in 1626 is also kept in his honour. His day coincides with the ancient martyrs Conon — Conon of Isauria and Conon the Gardener — and with Mark the Ascetic.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common of a venerable one)
With the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barrenness of the desert, and by thy sighing from the depths thou didst make thy labours bear fruit a hundredfold; and thou becamest a luminary to the whole world, shining forth with miracles, O Adrian our venerable father. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
No securely attributed pre-modern image of Adrian of Poshekhonye has been identified for storage under a firm licence; the entry stores no icon and notes him as wanting one. He is depicted as a Russian monastic saint — an abbot in the mantiya and analavos, bearded, holding a scroll — and, fittingly for the icon-painter, sometimes shown with the icon of the Dormition he is said to have carried to the founding of his monastery. As a venerable-martyr he may bear the martyr's cross.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Adrian of Nicomedia, the martyr of the Diocletianic persecution kept with his wife Natalia (August 26); nor with Adrian of Uglich (†after 1504), a third Russian Adrian, disciple of Paisius of Uglich, likewise kept on August 26; nor with Adrian and Eubulus, the martyrs of Caesarea in Palestine (February 3). This Adrian is the sixteenth-century Russian abbot and venerable-martyr of Poshekhonye. The confusion most likely to occur is with Adrian of Ondrusov (†1549/1550, August 26, with the finding of his relics on May 17), a Russian monastic founder of the very same years who was likewise killed for money he was thought to be carrying — by peasants on the road, where this Adrian was killed by robbers in his own monastery — and whose body was likewise hidden and afterwards found incorrupt: that Adrian is the disciple of Alexander of Svir and founder of the hermitage of Saint Nicholas at Ondrusov on Lake Ladoga, this one the disciple of Cornelius of Komel and founder of the Assumption house at Poshekhonye.
- Dates of birth. The OCA notice places his birth "at the end of the sixteenth century," which cannot be reconciled with his martyrdom in 1550; the founding dates it transmits (tonsure under Cornelius, who reposed in 1537; the settling at Poshekhonye in 1540; the church founded 1543) require a birth in the later fifteenth century, and this entry follows the internal chronology rather than the evidently corrupt birth notice.