Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah of Perm
Our Fathers among the Saints Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah, Bishops of Great Perm and Ust-Vym, Wonderworkers
Hieromartyr · Bishop · Wonderworker · d. Gerasimus c. 1441; Pitirim 1455; Jonah 1470
Commemorated 29 January — Joint commemoration of the three bishops of Perm, successors of Stephen the Enlightener, 6 June — Commemoration of Jonah of Perm alone (Slavonic and OCA usage), 19 August — Commemoration of Pitirim of Great Perm alone
Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah were three successive bishops of Great Perm, seated at Ust-Vym on the Vychegda, who in the fifteenth century carried forward the mission begun by Stephen of Perm among the Zyrians (Komi) and the pagan tribes of the far north-east of Russia. Gerasimus (†c. 1441) and Pitirim (†1455) were both martyred — the one strangled by a heathen of his own household, the other killed in a raid of the pagan Voguls (Mansi) — while Jonah (†1470) completed the conversion of Great Perm on the upper Kama and reposed in peace. Venerated together as the wonderworking hierarchs of Perm, their relics rest in the cathedral of Ust-Vym, and they are commemorated as a company on January 29.
The see of Perm and its enlighteners
The evangelization of the Perm land — the vast forested country of the Komi (Zyrian) and neighbouring Finnic and Ugrian peoples, between the Northern Dvina and the Urals — was the work of Stephen of Perm (†1396), who gave the Zyrians an alphabet, translated the services into their tongue, and founded the see of Ust-Vym. The three bishops of this entry were his successors in that see (with Isaac between Stephen and Gerasimus), and their lives are the continuation of his apostolate: the extension of the faith to the tribes still heathen, and the defence of the young Christian Perm against the raids of the pagans, chief among them the Voguls under their war-leader prince Asyka.
Gerasimus
Gerasimus became bishop of Perm after Stephen and Isaac, and laboured to strengthen the churches of the Zyrians and to shield his flock from the Vogul incursions. The tradition holds that he was martyred about the year 1441, strangled — with his own omophorion, in the common account — by a Vogul of his household whom he had taken in and shown kindness, or in the course of the pagan raids on the Christian settlements. He was buried at the cathedral of Ust-Vym, and honoured from the first as a martyr-bishop of the mission.
Pitirim
Pitirim, who had been archimandrite before his consecration, succeeded to the see and pressed the mission further, drawing many of the Voguls themselves to baptism and writing a life and service of Saint Alexis of Moscow. His success among the heathen provoked the enmity of the Vogul prince Asyka, who in 1455 fell upon Ust-Vym: as Pitirim was performing the blessing of the waters on the bank of the Vychegda, the raiders seized the bishop and put him to death. He too was laid to rest in the cathedral of Ust-Vym, a martyr like his predecessor; his individual martyrdom is kept on August 19, and he is commemorated with the others on January 29.
Jonah
Jonah (Iona) followed Pitirim as bishop and brought the mission to its completion. About the year 1462–1463 he converted the still-pagan people of Great Perm — the upper Kama country about Cherdyn and the river Vishera — baptizing their prince and people, overturning their idols, and founding churches and monasteries throughout the newly Christian land, so that the whole of Perm was gathered into the Church. Unlike his two predecessors he reposed in peace, in the year 1470, and was buried beside them at Ust-Vym.
Veneration
The three bishops are venerated together as the wonderworking hierarchs of Perm, the successors of Stephen who watered what he had planted and sealed the Perm mission with the blood of two of their number. Their relics rest in the cathedral of the Annunciation at Ust-Vym, where their common veneration was established; they are numbered also among the Synaxis of the Komi Saints. The record of their lives is that of the Russian menologia and the local Perm tradition, transmitted more fully for Pitirim than for Gerasimus or Jonah, and is given here at the length the sources allow.
Feast and commemoration
January 29 (church date; New Calendar civil January 29; Old Calendar civil February 11), a Russian (Moscow Patriarchate / OCA) commemoration, kept on the day led by the translation of the relics of Ignatius the God-bearer. The three are commemorated together as the bishops of Perm; Pitirim is commemorated singly on August 19 (his martyrdom), and all three are honoured in the Synaxis of the Komi Saints. No full proper service established from a public-domain original is given here; the common of hierarchs is used, sung with the three names.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of hierarchs)
O God of our fathers, who ever dealest with us according to thy gentleness, take not thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of thy holy hierarchs Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah, govern our life in peace.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
No verified pre-modern individual image of the Perm hierarchs has been secured on Wikimedia Commons under an unambiguous attribution; the entry therefore stores no image and the saints are noted as wanting an icon. They are depicted together as three bishops in phelonion and omophorion, holding Gospel-books, of varied age and beard, sometimes with the Zyrian land or the church of Ust-Vym behind them, and appear in the composite icon of the Synaxis of the Komi Saints.
Disputed questions
- A group of three, not a single martyrdom. The three did not die together: Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah were successive occupants of one see over some thirty years, two of them martyred and one reposing in peace. They are venerated as a company because of their shared apostolate and their common shrine at Ust-Vym, and are kept together on January 29; the group's types accordingly unite the martyr-bishops (hieromartyr) with Jonah, who was not martyred (bishop). Pitirim's own martyrdom is additionally kept on August 19.
- Not to be confused. These are the hierarchs of Perm-Vychegda / Ust-Vym, distinct from Stephen of Perm, their apostle and predecessor (commemorated April 26; his entry is not yet authored here); Jonah of Perm is not Jonah, Metropolitan of Moscow (†1461), nor Jonah of Novgorod; and Pitirim of Perm is not the later Pitirim of Tambov.
- Jonah of Perm and Jonah of Klimetzk. Jonah of Perm (†1470) has, besides this joint feast, his own commemoration on June 6, the day of his repose — and the Russian calendar keeps on that same June 6 a second, quite different Jonah, Jonah of Klimetzk (†1534), the Novgorod merchant who founded the Trinity monastery on Lake Onega after a vow made in a storm. Where a June 6 list prints "Venerable Jonah" without qualification it is ordinarily the Klimetzk founder; the Perm commemoration is styled "Saint Jonah, Bishop of Perm."