LIVES OF THE SAINTS OF RUS

"As a beautiful fruit of the sowing of Thy salvation, the land of Russia offers to Thee, O Lord, all the Saints that have shone in it. By their prayers keep the Church and our land in deep peace, through the Mother of God, O Most Merciful One." - Troparion for the Sunday of All Saints of Rus’

Royal princes and fools for Christ. Holy hierarchs and secluded hermits. Missionaries and martyrs. The choir of saints of Holy Rus’ represents the fruit of the Holy Spirit brought forth over a millennium of Christian life, even before the 10th century conversion of the Great-Prince Vladimir of Kiev. This inheritance has enriched and edified not only the saints’ own kinsmen, but the whole world through the zealous missionary efforts of the Russian Church in Siberia, North America, Japan, and beyond.

 

This daily synaxarion organizes the lives of a multitude of Russian saints by their days of commemoration according to the Church calendar, with those commemorated from January to June in this first volume. Also included are an alphabetized index of saints, maps of Rus' and medieval Russia, and an historical overview.

 

This two-volume work was compiled to strengthen the Orthodox faithful, whether in exile or suffering under Communist persecution. We now offer this English translation for the first time as a furtherance of that mission to inspire and exhort all the faithful of the Orthodox Church to preserve the memory of these spiritual beacons. 

Seraphim F. Englehardt is a freelance translator and editor and holds degrees in History and Theology as well as a MA in Russian Language and Literature. He has translated classics of Russian spiritual literature such as How to Live a Holy Life, by Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov), and St. Theophan the Recluse's commentary on Psalm 118 as well as for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1977– 1979. Nun Taisia was born in 1896 in the town of Raczki, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. Graduating from the Moscow Institute for Noble Maidens in 1916, she fled from the Bolshevik Revolution with her family to Germany, and finally settled in France in 1924. Having been tonsured a rassophore nun in 1946, she entered the Holy Protection Convent in Bussy-en-Othe in 1952, where she fulfilled obediences translating Orthodox books, writing spiritual literature, and compiling lives of the saints until her repose in 1995. She is best known for this latter obedience, for which she is remembered by