Eikon

Juvenaly of Alaska

The Holy Hieromartyr Juvenaly, Hieromonk, Protomartyr of America

Hieromartyr · New Martyr · Priest · b. 1761, Nerchinsk, Siberia — d. c. 1796, near Quinhagak on the Kuskokwim, Alaska

Commemorated 24 September — Martyrdom in Alaska; kept with the Synaxis of All Saints of Alaska, and with Peter the Aleut

Juvenaly (John Feodorovich Hovorukhin, 1761 – c. 1796), hieromonk of the Valaam mission to Kodiak, is the protomartyr of America — the first Orthodox Christian to die for the Gospel on the American continent. A mining engineer of Nerchinsk who took the tonsure after his wife's death, he sailed with Herman and the first missionaries in 1794, and threw himself on the farthest fields: in two years he baptized thousands — the Chugach of Nushagak, the peoples of the Kenai — and pressed alone into the mainland toward the Kuskokwim, where, about 1796, a hunting party fell upon him. Struck down, he rose and faced his killers, hands raised not in defence but in blessing and calling them to repentance, until they slew him. The native oral tradition kept the memory of the "shaman who would not stop speaking" and of the beads and cross found after him; the Church glorified him in 1980 among the first saints of America.

The engineer of Nerchinsk

John Feodorovich Hovorukhin was born in 1761 at Nerchinsk in eastern Siberia and trained as a mining engineer — one of the practical men of the Siberian frontier. Widowed in 1791, he laid the world down, entering monastic life and receiving the name Juvenaly; he was numbered among the brotherhood gathered from Valaam for the greatest missionary undertaking the Russian Church had yet mounted: the mission of 1793–94 to the Aleutian islands and Alaska, ten monks under the archimandrite Joasaph, with Herman among them. They reached Kodiak on 24 September 1794 — the day that would become, by God's providence, the feast of the martyrdom their company would suffer.

Two years, thousands of souls

The missionaries divided the immense field. Juvenaly, ordained hieromonk, took the mainland. In 1795 he baptized over seven hundred Chugach at Nushagak; in 1796 he crossed to the Kenai peninsula and baptized the peoples there; and then, alone — his fellow-priest Macarius having taken the Aleutians — he pressed north and west toward the Kuskokwim river, into country no missionary had entered. The native tradition of the Kuskokwim and the records of the mission agree on the direction of his path and on its end, near the mouth of the river by present-day Quinhagak.

Martyrdom

About 1796 a hunting party met him and, alarmed or affronted — the traditions differ on the motive, whether the shamans' hostility or the mission's baptisms — fell on him with spears and arrows. What the oral tradition remembered, and what the Church received, is the manner of it: struck from behind, he turned and faced his attackers, neither fleeing nor resisting, his hands lifted, calling them to repentance while the blows fell, until he was beaten to death. The tradition adds that the killers, troubled, could not make his memory die: the account of the "man who kept speaking" survived among the people of the river until the missionaries of the next century wrote it down. He was the first — the protomartyr of America — of a company that Peter the Aleut would join two decades later.

Glorification

Juvenaly was glorified by the Orthodox Church in America in 1980, in the wake of Herman's glorification, and is commemorated on September 24 — the day the mission first landed at Kodiak — together with the Synaxis of All Saints of Alaska and with Peter the Aleut, the two martyrs of the American land keeping one feast.

Feast and commemoration

September 24 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 7), with the Synaxis of All Saints of Alaska and the martyr Peter the Aleut. The OCA lectionary appoints the martyrs' readings recorded in the entry's record — "who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" — for the American protomartyrs together.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4

First-fruits of the martyrs of the western land, thou didst leave the mines of the earth to dig for souls, O hieromonk Juvenaly: and when the spears fell upon thee, thou didst turn and bless thy slayers, preaching repentance with thy last breath. Entreat Christ God, whom thou didst carry to the ends of the earth, that our souls may be saved.

Original translation from the Slavonic

Appointed readings

Epistle — Romans 8:28–39

28And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 29For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 31What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? 33Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. 34Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Gospel — Luke 21:12–19

12But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake. 13And it shall turn to you for a testimony. 14Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: 15For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. 16And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. 17And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. 18But there shall not an hair of your head perish. 19In your patience possess ye your souls.

Iconography

Juvenaly is painted as a hieromonk-martyr of the American mission: in monastic klobuk and mantle with the epitrachelion and pectoral cross of a priest, holding the cross of martyrdom, often with a spear or arrows as the instruments of his passion, the Alaskan water and tundra behind him; in composite icons he stands in the Synaxis of the Saints of Alaska beside Herman, Innocent, Jacob Netsvetov and Peter the Aleut. Every icon of him is a work of the post-1980 glorification and in copyright, and no lifetime image of any kind exists; the entry stands without a stored image and he is listed among the wanted icons.

Sources

  1. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, September 24 — "Martyr Juvenal of Alaska" (consulted live): his birth at Nerchinsk in 1761, the engineering training, the 1794 Valaam mission, the baptisms at Nushagak and Kenai, the path to the Kuskokwim, and the manner of the martyrdom in the native tradition.
  2. The records and correspondence of the Kodiak mission, 1794–1798 (the reports of Archimandrite Joasaph) — the division of the mission fields and the first notice of Juvenaly's death.
  3. The Yup'ik oral tradition of the lower Kuskokwim, as collected by the 19th-century missionaries — the killing near Quinhagak and the memory of the martyr who preached as he died.
  4. Orthodox Church in America, acts of the glorification of 1980.