Jonah of Klimetzk
Our Venerable Father Jonah, Founder of the Klimetzk Monastery of the Holy Trinity on Lake Onega
Venerable · b. John (Ivan) Klementiev, a merchant of Novgorod — d. June 6, 1534, at the Klimetzk monastery on Lake Onega
Commemorated 6 June — Repose at the monastery he founded on Lake Onega
Jonah of Klimetzk, in the world John, of the Novgorod merchant family of the Klementievs, was caught by a storm on Lake Onega in 1490 while travelling on his trade, and in the extremity cried out to the Lord to spare his life that he might repent and serve God. The boat was driven to safety on a sandbar of the island the Russians call Klimetsky, and there — the tradition says he found a holy icon in a juniper bush, and received the assurance that he should build on that spot — he fulfilled his vow. He was tonsured, and raised the Klimetzk monastery of the Holy Trinity, with a second church of St Nicholas, the patron of sailors and travellers. He refused the abbacy and lived out his life as a simple monk, and reposed on June 6, 1534. A church of the Righteous Zachariah and Elizabeth was built over his relics.
The merchant of Novgorod
John Klementiev belonged to a prosperous Novgorod merchant house whose business lay in the north — the salt-works, fisheries and trade of the Onega and Ladoga country, the region the Russians call Obonezhye. He is one of the small number of Russian saints whose vocation begins not in a monastery or a princely court but in a boat on a working journey, and the details of his life keep the shape of that beginning: the lake, the weather, the sandbar, and the church of St Nicholas.
The storm on Lake Onega, 1490
In 1490, crossing Lake Onega, John was overtaken by a violent storm. Onega is a great inland sea, shallow and treacherous, and its summer squalls have drowned generations of northern boatmen. With the vessel about to be lost, John cried out to the Lord, entreating Him to preserve his life so that he might repent and serve God — the vow of a man who knows he has spent his years on other things.
The boat was carried through and grounded on a sandy spit of the island of Klimetsky (Klimenetsky), in the strait off the Zaonezhye peninsula. Ashore, and looking for the sign of what he was to do, he found a holy icon caught in a juniper bush — the tradition varies as to which icon, and the Russian accounts of northern foundations very often turn on just such a finding — and understood it as the direction he had asked for: that he should build a monastery of the Holy Trinity on that place.
The founding of the Klimetzk monastery
John was tonsured with the name Jonah, and set about the work. The Klimetzk Trinity monastery rose on the island with two churches: the principal one of the Most Holy Trinity, in fulfilment of the vow, and a second of St Nicholas the Wonderworker — the choice of every northern boatman's foundation, since Nicholas is the patron of those who travel by water, and Jonah had been one of them. The house drew brethren from the surrounding country and became one of the monastic outposts by which the Church held and cultivated the Onega lands through the sixteenth century.
The refusal of the abbacy
Jonah would not be igumen. Having founded the monastery and built its churches, he declined the office and remained a simple monk among the brethren he had gathered, under an abbot of their choosing. The Russian Lives mark this as the substance of his sanctity rather than an incident of it: the vow he had made on the water was to serve, and he read the founding of the house as the discharge of that vow and not as a claim upon it.
Repose and relics
He reposed on June 6, 1534, at the monastery, and was buried there. His grave became a place of veneration in the north, and a church dedicated to the Righteous Zachariah and Elizabeth, the parents of the Forerunner, was raised over his relics — the customary Russian way of enshrining a local founder before, and often without, any formal glorification. The monastery kept his memory on the day of his repose, and through it the commemoration entered the Russian calendars.
Feast and commemoration
June 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 19). Jonah is kept on the day of his repose in the Russian calendars and in the Orthodox Church in America's synaxarion, among the Russian saints of a day otherwise Byzantine and Egyptian — with Paisius of Uglich (†1504, whose repose falls on this same day) and Jonah of Perm (†1470). He is not in the Greek calendars. His commemoration is local in origin and is kept with especial honour in the churches of Karelia and the Onega country. The common of a venerable monastic is sung.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a venerable founder)
Thou didst call upon the Lord out of the deep waters and He heard thee, and thou didst pay Him thy vow with the labour of thy hands: for on the island of thy deliverance thou didst raise a house to the Holy Trinity and a temple to Nicholas the guide of voyagers, and being father of many thou wouldest be least of all, O venerable Jonah. Intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
Jonah is painted in the northern Russian manner proper to a monastic founder: an elderly monk in the dark mantle and koukoulion or bare-headed, with a long grey beard, one hand raised in blessing or in prayer and the other holding a scroll; and, as the type requires, the model of his monastery — the two churches of the Trinity and of St Nicholas within their wooden palisade — held in his hands or set at his feet, with Lake Onega and the island behind. Fuller cycles show the storm and the grounded boat, and the finding of the icon in the juniper, which are the two scenes his tradition supplies. He may appear in compositions of All the Saints of Karelia and of the Novgorod land.
No pre-1900 image of him has been located for this collection: searches of the public-domain collections under both the Russian and the English forms of his name returned nothing, and his feast in June puts him outside the Menologion of Basil II, whose miniatures run only from September to February.
Disputed questions
- The icon in the juniper. Which icon Jonah found is not consistently transmitted; some accounts leave it unnamed, and the motif of an image discovered in a tree or bush is a commonplace of northern Russian foundation narratives (compare the traditions of many Onega and Ladoga houses). The finding is part of the monastery's own tradition and is reported here as such.
- The date of the founding. The vow and the storm are dated 1490; the building of the monastery is placed by the sources in the years following, without a firm year. Some accounts give 1490 for the foundation itself, compressing vow and building into one.
- The name of the island. Klimetsky / Klimenetsky in Russian, whence the saint's epithet; the forms Klimetzk, Klimetsk and Klimenets all occur in English.
- Not to be confused with Jonah, Metropolitan of Moscow (March 31), with Jonah, Archbishop of Novgorod (November 5), or with Jonah, Bishop of Perm (†1470), who is commemorated on this same day, June 6, as well as with his fellow-hierarchs of Perm on January 29. The coincidence of the two Jonahs on June 6 in the Russian calendar is a standing source of confusion: this Jonah is the monastic founder on Lake Onega who died in 1534, the other the bishop of Great Perm who died in 1470.
- Glorification. No act of formal canonisation is recorded; his veneration is of the local, monastic kind, entering the general Russian calendar through the diocesan and monastic menologia.