Leonty Rostovsky

St. Simon, Bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal , in a letter to the Kiev-Pechersk Archimandrite Akindin , annexed to the Pechersk Patericon , listing the princes of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery and naming Leonty among them, calls him the third “citizen of the Russian world”. The life of this saint, preserved in numerous lists, reports that he was a Greek , a native of Constantinople . Metropolitan Macarius , reconciling these contradictions, admits that Leonty could be a Greek, who later came to Russia. Vasily Klyuchevsky stands for the Russian origin of Leonty. The service to this saint, preserved in the lists of the XIII-XVI centuries and compiled by the bishop of Rostov, John , who occupied the Rostov pulpit in 1190-1214, a contemporary and close acquaintance of bishop Simon of Vladimir, claims, according to his life, the Greek origin of Saint Leonty: “from the royal city, even like the sun, degrees Rostov shone ", at the same time he says:" you have loved the thou from the youth of Christ, the idol mocked and vile idols and services, you blessed the temple yourself "( stishir praise ), and thus indicates its Russian origin. In the lists of the lives of the 4th edition and in the prologue about St. Leontius it is said: “The Russian and Greek languages ​​are well understood, the books are Russian and Greek greats are cunning and the narrator is quick from youth” ^[1] .

He was baptized even in infancy (“consecrated from swaddling clothes, from young nails”), then, according to the order of Prince Vladimir or Yaroslav , he was taken “into a book teaching” (“the storyteller from Russian youth should be quick”), with the aim of erection with time (“God was first chosen from youth, father, shepherd of verbal sheep, so they will receive the reverend faces”) ^[1] .

Thanks to school education and book teaching, St. Leonty felt attracted to monastic life from a young age, and for further study he was sent or voluntarily went to Constantinople , where he may have been tonsured a monk . Upon his return from Constantinople, he came to the Cave Monastery to the Monk Anthony , which was no earlier than 1032, whence those who were at the head of the then reign were called to the Rostov chair as a Russian educated monk and ordained as bishop , “as the first patron” of the monks Pechersk, before 1051, when he was elevated to the rank of Metropolitan of Kiev, the second patron and vigilant of the Kiev Pechersk Monastery - Hilarion ^[1] .

In Rostov, St. Leonty turned out to be a lone fighter for the Christian faith, since Rostov, after the death of St. Boris Vladimirovich , did not have his own princes for a long time, and although in 1054, after the death of Yaroslav the Wise, three years after Leonty arrived in Rostov, the latter went to inheritance to the son of Yaroslav Vsevolod , but Vsevolod lived during the reign in Pereyaslavl Russian or in Kiev itself, his son Vladimir Monomakh spent his young years in military affairs or near his father. True, the first bishop Theodore of Rostov built an oak tree, “marvelous and great,” according to the annals, in Rostov, a cathedral church in the name of the Assumption of Our Lady back in the time of St. Vladimir, in 991, and with it a church clergy was established, but there were few Christians, and St. Theodore himself, as well as his successor Hilarion , were shamefully expelled from the city ^[1] .

Met hostilely by the elders of the city of Rostov, Leonty settled at the cathedral church and, first of all, began to educate the clergy. The monument to this enlightening activity of St. Leontius is the one that came down to us and is attributed to him in two manuscripts: “The teaching and punishment of the priest about everything, as children should teach their spiritual teachings and epithems to them, according to the commandment and according to the rule of the saints, father.” This teaching has no resemblance to others bearing the same names. It speaks of the importance of the priesthood, of repentance, of penance, of baptism, the resurrection of the dead, and of monotheism ^[2] . However, Professor Nikolai Nikolsky says that in most lists this teaching is attributed to Metropolitan Kirill (until 1280). Saint Leonty loved the church clergy organized and spiritually and morally enlightened by him, so that he took with him to the grave a scroll with the names of the clergymen whom he had placed: upon the discovery of the relics, “the video of the great Leonty ... holding the scroll in his hand, it also contains the dialers and deacons , but he set them with his hand ” ^[1] .

Simultaneously with the “punishment” of the clergy, Leonty labored in a sermon of Christian truths to the Rostov fellow Gentiles from the populous tribe of Mary , but his open sermon met at first with a dull resistance, and then their open rebellion: several times they repelled him with dishonor and, finally, , completely expelled him from the city. Then he settled out of town near a small stream Brutovshchitsy, where he built a small wooden church in the name of the holy Archangel Michael. Fighting here in fasting and prayers, he sowed the seeds of Christ's faith in the hearts of the youths of Rostov, whom for this purpose he called to himself and fed wheat cooked with honey. Over time, St. Leonty again settled in the city and with zeal preached the word of God and baptized many youths and adults ^[1] .

The success of the missionary work of St. Leonty hardened the hearts of the Rostov inhabitants of the pagan faith, and they decided to kill him. Once, with arms in hand, they approached the cathedral church and demanded that the saint go out to them. "The priests and the deacons of the cathedral were frightened and began to beg their archpastor so that he would not go out and secretly hide from idolaters who were ready to kill him." But he, putting on the bishop's vestments, along with priests and deacons , dressed, in his order, in sacred robes, went out of the temple to the people. Struck by the courage of the saint and the light of heaven coming from his face, the pagans fell to the earth, came in bodily relaxation and, like the dead, lay on the ground at the feet of the saint. Having prayed to the Lord, he raised them up and healed; according to his exhortation, they accepted his faith and were baptized, and from that time the church in Rostov began to grow. “Then the darkness of the idol began to depart, and the light of good faith shone,” says the ancient laudatory word to St. Leontius ^[1] .

Information about the death of St. Leontius is contradictory: according to one - he died in the world, according to others - he was killed by a crowd of pagans; some attribute his death to 1070, others believe that he was killed in 1073. Evgeni Golubinsky indicates that he died around 1077 ^[3] . In any case, all the lists of life indicated by Metropolitan Macarius, according to the first and second editions of the epistle of St. Simon, tell of the peaceful death of St. Leontius. And the bishop of Rostov, John, in the canon, glorifies St. Leontius as a blessed and reverend , but not as a martyr . And in this service to the hierarch, compiled at the same time as the canon and, most likely, by the same bishop John, it is clearly said about his peaceful death: “I did not give sleep to your eye, nor to every one of your slumber, Dondezh fell asleep with a common one” ( stichera “Lord Cries” at the Great Vespers ) ^[1] .

On the other hand, the bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal Simon writes the following about Leonty: “Leonty, the bishop of Rostov, the great saint, whom God glorified incorruption, he was the first throne; after many torments, the infidels killed him ” ^[4] .

The holy body of Equal-to-the-Apostles Saint Leontius was buried in the Cathedral Assumption Church of the city of Rostov , and was found incorrupt in 1162 when digging ditches under the walls of the stone cathedral church that was burnt down by the great Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky in the place of the burnt oak Cathedral Church of the Assumption, burnt in 1160, and was laid in the same place by the prince a stone tomb in a small chapel arranged in honor of his on the south side of the altar of the cathedral church. The Rostov bishop John I established a celebration for the saint on the day of finding his relics - May 23 and wrote a canon placed in the service (May) Minea .

But the vaults of the cathedral church, erected by little-minded architects, soon collapsed, and the relics of St. Leontius were transferred to the Church of St. John the Theologian (which from that time replaced Rostov Cathedral Church) and remained in it until 1231; February 25, 1231 they were again transferred to the newly rebuilt church in the name of the Assumption of the Mother of God and placed in the aisle dedicated to the name of the saint. In 1609, the Poles and Lithuanians who devastated Rostov kidnapped the saint’s golden cancer and his precious icon, and since then the relics of St. Leontius have been buried under wraps , and in their resting place is a cancer with its tombstone icon. In 1800, at the zeal of the Rostov cancer citizens, the saint was given a silver, decorated with an elegant bronze gilt canopy. During the restoration of the Rostov Assumption Cathedral in 1884, “the Lord favored partly to open the place of underground rest of the Rostov miracle worker: under the floor (in the underground) of the current chapel in the name of St. Leonty was discovered an ancient chapel in honor of this saint, in which on the south side there is a niche decorated with ancient frescoes with images of St. Leontius, the repose and acquisition of his relics; next to the wall image of st. Leonty, almost flush with the brick floor of the chapel, directly beneath the now existing silver crayfish of St. Leonty, the tomb, walled up in white stone, was discovered, in which, it is believed, the honest relics of St. Leontia ” ^[1] .

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