Maxim Sandovich
The Holy Hieromartyr Maxim Sandovich, Priest of the Lemkos, Protomartyr of the Carpatho-Russian Return
Hieromartyr · New Martyr · Priest · b. 1886, Zdynia, the Lemko region of Carpatho-Rus — d. 6 September 1914, Gorlice
Commemorated 6 September — Martyrdom by firing squad in the prison yard of Gorlice
Maxim Sandovich (1886–1914), priest of the Lemko highlands, is the protomartyr of the Carpatho-Russian return to Orthodoxy — a young Lemko who left the Uniate Basilians for the Orthodox monastery of Pochaev, was ordained in 1911 for the villages of his own mountains, and served them under constant Austrian prosecution: two years in a Lviv prison on charges of "Russophile treason" ended in acquittal in the great trial of March 1914, and five months later, the World War having begun, he was seized again and shot without trial in the prison yard of Gorlice on 6 September 1914, crying with his last breath, "Long live the Rus' people, long live Orthodoxy!" His pregnant wife, father and brother were sent to the Talerhof camp; his posthumous son became a priest. The Church of Poland glorified him at Gorlice in September 1994.
A Lemko vocation
Maxim was born in 1886 at Zdynia in the Lemko region — the westernmost of the Carpatho-Russian highlands, then under Austria — the son of the church cantor Timothy Sandovich. Schooled at Jasło and Nowy Sącz, he tried his vocation first with the Uniate Basilians of Kraków; finding there neither the rite nor the faith of his fathers as he understood them, he crossed to the Orthodox Lavra of Pochaev, and Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), who gathered the Carpatho-Russian returners of that generation, sent him to the seminary at Zhitomir. In 1911 he finished the course, married Pelagia Grigoryuk, was ordained priest, and on 2 December 1911 served his first Liturgy at Hrab — the first Orthodox Liturgy in those mountains in living memory.
The forbidden parishes
Austria treated the Lemko return to Orthodoxy as Russian subversion. Father Maxim served Hrab, Wysowatka and Długie in defiance of prohibitions, fined and harried from village to village; in the spring of 1912 he was arrested with Father Ignatius Hudyma and held two years untried in the Lviv prison, until the celebrated Marmaros-Sziget-style treason trial of the Lemko Orthodox opened at Lviv on 9 March 1914 and collapsed: acquitted, he went straight back to his villages.
Martyrdom
The war gave the state what the court had refused. On 4 August 1914 he was arrested with his whole family, and on 6 September 1914, in the courtyard of the Gorlice prison, without trial or sentence, an Austrian firing squad shot him against the wall before his father's eyes. He stood with a cross in his bound hands; the tradition of the Lemkos keeps his last cry: "Long live the Rus' people! Long live holy Orthodoxy!" His wife, carrying their child, was driven with his father and brother to the Talerhof concentration camp, the Golgotha of the Carpatho-Russians; the son born after his death, Maxim, served as an Orthodox priest until 1991.
Glorification
The Orthodox Church of Poland glorified Maxim Sandovich in September 1994 at Gorlice, where his relics were translated to the church of the Holy Trinity on 5–6 September 2007. He is the heavenly patron of the Lemkos and of the whole Carpatho-Russian return, honoured wherever that people was scattered — not least in America, whose Carpatho-Russian parishes are the diaspora of his flock.
Feast and commemoration
September 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 19) — the day of his martyrdom. The hieromartyr's common readings are recorded in the frontmatter.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
As a good shepherd of the Lemko mountains thou didst lead thy people back to the faith of their fathers, and wast not silenced by prison nor by the rifles of the persecutors, O hieromartyr Maxim: standing at the wall with the cross in thy bound hands, thou didst cry out for Christ and thy people. Entreat him whom thou didst confess, that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Appointed readings
Epistle — Hebrews 13:7–16
7Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. 8Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. 9Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein. 10We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. 11For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. 12Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. 13Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. 14For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come. 15By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. 16But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Gospel — Luke 12:32–40
32Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. 34For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 35Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; 36And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. 37Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. 38And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. 39And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. 40Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.
Iconography
Maxim is painted as a young priest new-martyr of the Carpathians: black-bearded, in riassa and epitrachelion or in phelonion, holding the cross of martyrdom — often the standing figure against the prison wall, or with the Lemko wooden churches behind him. As he died in 1914, photographs of him survive (the seminarian's and the prison photographs are widely reproduced); painted icons are post-1994 works in copyright. No image is stored yet; a licence-clean photograph, admissible per §50, is the immediate want and is listed among the wanted icons.