Barlaam of Shenkursk
Our Venerable Father Barlaam of the Vaga, Founder of the Monastery of St John the Theologian at Shenkursk
Venerable · b. c. 1390, Novgorod — d. 19 June 1462, at his monastery on the Vaga
Commemorated 19 June — Repose at the monastery he founded on the Vaga
Barlaam — Vasily Stepanovich Svoezemtsev in the world — was a Novgorod boyar and posadnik of the city who owned great estates on the northern river Vaga, in the country around what is now Shenkursk. In 1426 he founded there a monastery dedicated to St John the Theologian, endowing it from his own lands; thirty years later, at the end of a long public life, he was tonsured in it himself, taking the name Barlaam, and lived as a monk for six years. He reposed on 19 June 1462 and was buried beside the church he had built. His relics were found incorrupt in the next century and became the centre of a strong local veneration in the Russian North.
A Novgorod boyar in the North
Vasily Stepanovich belonged to the Svoezemtsev family, among the great boyar houses of Novgorod the Great, and was the son of the boyar Stepan. His father had acquired lands far to the north-east of the city, on the Vaga, a tributary of the Northern Dvina — one of those enormous Novgorodian colonial holdings by which the republic drew furs, salt and fish out of the Dvina lands. Vasily inherited and enlarged them, settling the country he owned, and by the accounts he was a landlord of the better sort: the local tradition remembers him for defending the northern peasantry against raids and for building churches among them.
In the city itself he held the highest office the republic could give, serving as posadnik — the elected chief magistrate, usually rendered "mayor," though the office was nearer to that of a governing burgomaster — until 1445. He was married and had children; the sources differ over whether there were two sons or a larger family of sons and daughters.
The monastery on the Vaga
In 1426, while still in the world, he founded on his own land at the mouth of the Pinezhka, where it joins the Vaga, a monastery dedicated to St John the Theologian. He built its church, endowed it with villages and fisheries from his estates, and confirmed the grant by charter. The house is known to Russian history as the Varlaamiev Vazhsky (or Importsky) monastery, and the settlement that grew about it lies within the district of Shenkursk, from which the saint takes his usual English epithet.
Tonsure and repose
After a long life in public affairs, and by now an old man, he laid the world down. In 1456 he was tonsured in his own foundation by its first hegumen, receiving the name Barlaam. He lived as a monk for six years, in the obedience of the house he had built and paid for — a reversal that the northern hagiography clearly relished, the founder become a novice among the monks he had endowed.
He reposed on 19 June 1462 and was buried, as he had asked, beside the church of St John the Theologian.
Relics and veneration
The tradition of the house relates that the river Vaga, shifting its channel, in time cut away the bank in which he lay and exposed the coffin, and that when it was opened in the middle of the sixteenth century — the year usually given is 1552 — the body was found incorrupt. The relics were taken up and placed in the monastery church, and from that uncovering dates the local veneration, the writing of his Life and service, and the record of healings at his tomb. His cult never became general in the Russian Church; he is a saint of the Northern calendar and of the synaxis of the saints of the Archangel and Kholmogory lands, and beyond Russia is known chiefly through the OCA's calendar, which keeps his June 19 commemoration.
Feast and commemoration
June 19 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 2), the day of his repose. He is a commemoration of the Russian books; the Greek Menaion does not know him, and the day's service everywhere belongs to the Apostle Jude. He is kept with the synaxis of the saints of the Russian North, and locally at Shenkursk, where the memory of his uncovering is also observed.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable father)
By a flood of tears thou didst make the barren desert to bring forth; with sighs from the depths thou didst make thy labours bear fruit a hundredfold; and thou wast made a beacon for the whole world, shining with miracles, O Barlaam our father. Intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Barlaam is painted in the Russian manner as an aged monk in the dark mantle and koukoulion, with a long grey beard parted at the point, holding a scroll or with both hands raised in prayer; his distinguishing attribute is a small model of the wooden church of St John the Theologian held in the left hand, or the monastery shown behind him on its river bluff. He appears also among the crowded ranks of the synaxis of the saints of the Russian North.
No pre-1900 image of him has been located for this collection. The best candidate found is an icon of the early twentieth century from the church of Sts Zosimas and Sabbatius of Solovki at Shenkursk, published from the Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopediya; it is out of copyright by anonymity rather than by age, and falls on the wrong side of the pre-1900 rule of §8, so it has not been stored. The coordinator may wish to review that judgement.
Disputed questions
- Which of the northern Barlaams. He is not Barlaam of Khutyn (†1192, November 6), the great Novgorod wonderworker and founder of the Khutyn monastery on the Volkhov — the confusion most likely to occur, since both are Barlaams of Novgorod who founded monasteries and are honoured with incorrupt relics, and the two are separated by two and a half centuries. He is likewise not Barlaam of Antioch (November 19), nor the Barlaam of Barlaam and Josaphat.
- The epithets. Russian usage calls him variously Vazhsky (of the Vaga), Pinezhsky (of the Pinezhka, from the site of the monastery) and Shenkursky (of Shenkursk, from the modern district). All three name the same place, and none is a second saint.
- His family. The sources differ on the number and sex of his children, and on how much of the Vaga holding was inherited from his father Stepan and how much acquired by himself. Nothing turns on either question.