John and Jacob of Meniugi
The Righteous Youths John and Jacob of Meniugi, Wonderworkers of Novgorod
Righteous · Passion Bearer · d. c. 1566–1569, at Medvedsky pogost in the Novgorod land
Commemorated 24 June — Their common commemoration, kept at the Trinity church of Menyusha
Two small brothers of a peasant household in the Novgorod land — John, aged about five, and Jacob, aged about three — who died together about 1566–1569 in an accident so terrible that the countryside took it at once for a sign. Their bodies were found unburnt, they were buried at the church of the Medvedsky pogost, and (the local tradition says) their coffins were afterwards seen floating on the lake and were carried to the deserted place called Menyusha, where a chapel and later the Trinity monastery grew up over them. Their relics were found incorrupt and enshrined in the Trinity church at Menyusha between 1682 and 1689, and healings were reported there. The Russian Church numbers them among the righteous youths and keeps them on June 24. The record is thin, local, and partly legendary, and this entry says so.
What is transmitted
Everything known of them comes from a short Novgorod povest' and the calendar notices that depend on it. The brothers were the sons of Isidore and Barbara, pious peasants of a settlement in the Medvedsky district of the Novgorod land, in the reign of Ivan IV; the usual dating of their deaths is 1566–1569.
The Russian account of the deaths is domestic and appalling. One autumn day the parents left the two children at home while they worked in the field. The elder, John, had lately watched his father slaughter a sheep, and in play struck his little brother Jacob with a piece of wood as he had seen it done; the blow killed him. Terrified at what he had done, John hid himself in the great household stove, behind the stacked firewood. The mother, returning, lit the stove to dry the wood, as she did every day. When the parents at last understood what had happened, they found both children dead — and, the account insists, both bodies whole and untouched by the fire.
The alternative version is the one the English calendars carry: that the brothers were "killed by miscreants," James at three years of age and John at five. The two accounts agree exactly on the names, the ages and the date, and differ only in the manner of death; the second is best understood as the softened form the notices took as they travelled (see Disputed questions).
The finding, and Menyusha
The parents buried the children at the church of St Nicholas in the Medvedsky pogost. What follows is the part the local tradition tells with most confidence and the historian with least: some days later hunters lost in the forest came upon a lake, and saw the two coffins floating upon its water. The priests of the district were fetched, took up the coffins, and carried them to an empty place called Menyusha, where a chapel was raised over them.
The chapel became a shrine, and the shrine drew the healings that made the cult. The one specified in the tradition is the cure of a monk named Macarius, who in gratitude restored the church and established the Trinity monastery of Menyusha around it. Between 1682 and 1689 the relics of the two brothers were found incorrupt and were placed in a reliquary in the Trinity church at Menyusha, in the Novgorod diocese, on the site of the former monastery — the act that fixed their veneration and the date at which the surviving notices begin.
How the Church reads them
The Church's reading of these deaths is precise, and it is not sentimental. The younger brother, killed without fault of his own, is honoured as innocently slain; the elder, who died in the fire, is said in the Russian phrase to have received a fiery martyrdom — that is, his death is understood as having expiated the deed of a five-year-old who did not know what he was doing. Neither died for the confession of Christ, and neither is styled martyr in the calendars; they are righteous youths, pravednye otroki, the class in which the Russian tradition places its innocently-killed children — as it places Demetrius of Uglich, Artemy of Verkola, and others of that company. The incorruption of the bodies is what the tradition treats as the verdict; the veneration follows from it and not from any deed of theirs.
Feast and commemoration
June 24 (church date; New Calendar civil June 24; Old Calendar civil July 7) — which is also the great feast of the Nativity of the Forerunner, so that their commemoration is in practice a local one at Menyusha and in the Novgorod diocese, kept in the litanies elsewhere. They are also commemorated in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod, which is a movable rule (the third Sunday after Pentecost) and therefore not entered in the entry's record above. Russian usage and the OCA; the Greek books do not have them.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4
Thy righteous ones, O Lord, having lived in innocence upon the earth, were shown to be vessels of thy grace, and now they stand before thee unashamed. By the prayers of the righteous youths John and Jacob, O Christ our God, have mercy upon the children of thy people and save our souls.
Iconography
No pre-1900 image of these saints has been located, and none is stored. The established Russian type — known from the Menyusha shrine and from Novgorod menologion panels — shows the two as small boys standing side by side, John a little taller than Jacob, in long belted shirts of a plain colour with their hair cut straight across the brow, each holding a small cross in the right hand and the left hand open at the breast; above them Christ blesses from a segment of heaven. It is the standard scheme for the innocently-slain children of the Russian calendar. Where a narrative border exists it shows the finding of the coffins upon the lake. They are added to the list of icons still being sought.
Disputed questions
- The manner of death. The Russian povest' and azbyka.ru give the accident in the household — the blow in imitation of the slaughtering of a sheep, and the stove — while the OCA and the English-language calendars say only that the brothers were "killed by miscreants." The Slavonic notices contain both formulas (the vaguer "убиты злодеями" and the full narrative), and this entry gives the detailed version as primary because it is the older and the local one, while recording the other. It is worth noting which way the softening runs: a story in which the mother lights the stove is not one anybody would invent.
- The dating. "1566–1569" is the received range and rests on the reign of Ivan IV, not on a document. Their dies natalis is unknown; June 24 is the day of their veneration at Menyusha, not a recorded date of death.
- The floating coffins. A migratory hagiographic motif in the Russian North, found also in the traditions of other locally-venerated relics, and reported here as the tradition of the shrine rather than as an event.
- Classification. They are typed here righteous and passion-bearer. The Russian calendars call them pravednye otroki, "righteous youths," which the righteous term carries; passion-bearer is added because their veneration belongs to the specifically Slavic category of the innocently-killed, which that term exists to cover. child-martyr was considered and rejected: they did not die for the faith, and no calendar styles them martyrs.
- Not to be confused with the many other Novgorod wonderworkers of the same names, nor with John the Forerunner, whose great feast falls on the same day, nor with James the Brother of the Lord.