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October 6 is the feast of St Innocent (Veniaminov): a short life, miracles, death, the day’s troparia and a prayer, with a comparison of sources.
Saint Innocent (born Ivan Popov-Veniaminov, 1797–1879) was a Siberian village boy who became a priest, linguist, missionary and, finally, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. He is known as the Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to America and Siberia. The Church glorified him on October 6, 1977 (September 23 Old Style), which is why October 6 is the day on which he is honored. This article draws on several independent sources and states plainly where they disagree.
A note on dates: In the 21st century, September 23 Old Style falls on October 6 in the modern calendar, so the glorification is observed on the same day by churches using the Julian and the revised calendars. The memory of his repose is kept on March 31 (in churches on the revised calendar) or April 13 (in churches that follow the Julian calendar).
Saint Innocent at a Glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Born | August 26, 1797 O.S. (September 6 N.S.), village of Anga (Anginskoye), Irkutsk Governorate |
| Father | Evsevy Popov, sexton (ponomar) of the village church; died 1803 |
| Monastic name | Innocent, in honor of Saint Innocent of Irkutsk (1840) |
| Offices | Priest (1821), bishop (1840), archbishop (1850), Metropolitan of Moscow (1868) |
| Died | March 31, 1879 O.S., on Holy Saturday, in Moscow (aged 81) |
| Buried | Holy Trinity–St Sergius Lavra, Church of the Holy Spirit; relics discovered in 1994, now in the lavra’s Dormition Cathedral |
| Glorified | October 6, 1977 (Russian Orthodox Church, at the request of the Orthodox Church in America) |
A Short Biography
Childhood and Education
Ivan was born in a poor Siberian village where his father served as the church sexton. His father died when the boy was six, and he was raised by his uncle. Even as a child he read the Apostle (the Epistle lection) aloud in church. He was sent to the Irkutsk seminary, where the rector gave him the new surname Veniaminov in memory of Bishop Veniamin of Irkutsk, who had recently died. The young man was gifted with his hands: at the seminary he built a wooden water clock with a striking mechanism, and later he made clocks and small organs, as well as the altar table and iconostasis of his church on Unalaska.
In 1817 he married and was ordained a deacon at the Annunciation Church in Irkutsk; in 1821 he became a priest. What Irkutsk remembered about him was above all that on Sundays, before the Liturgy, he gathered the children into the church and taught them the faith.
Unalaska and the Aleutian Islands (1824–1834)
In 1823 the Bishop of Irkutsk was looking for a volunteer priest for the island of Unalaska in the Aleutians, but no one wished to go so far. Father John (Ioann) Veniaminov announced that he was willing. He later wrote that, on hearing of the Aleuts’ zeal for prayer and for the word of God, he was suddenly seized by a great desire to go to them. The journey, with his family (his elderly mother, his wife, a small son and his brother), began on May 7, 1823 and lasted more than a year: they reached Unalaska on July 29, 1824.
The family first lived in a dwelling dug into the ground. Veniaminov taught the Aleuts carpentry, blacksmithing and masonry, and with them built the Church of the Ascension (consecrated in 1826). He learned six local dialects, devised a Cyrillic-based alphabet for Aleut, and translated the catechism and the Gospel of Matthew into the language (1828). His Aleut work, the Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven (written about 1833), proved so popular that it went through more than forty editions and was translated into other languages of the small peoples of the North. In 1829 he travelled to Nushagak on the Alaskan mainland, where he baptized 13 people on his first visit and more than 200 on his second.
Sitka and the Tlingit (1834–1838)
In 1834 he was transferred to Sitka (Novoarkhangelsk), home to the Tlingit, then called the “Koloshi,” who were deeply suspicious of the Russians. He learned their language and customs and wrote a scholarly work about them. His method was gentle: he waited until a person himself asked for baptism, and he used no pressure.
Monk and Bishop (1839–1841)
In 1838–1839 he travelled to St Petersburg and Moscow to obtain permission to print books in Aleut and to ask for more churches and priests. Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow said of him, “There is something apostolic about this man.” In St Petersburg he learned that his wife had died in Irkutsk. On Filaret’s advice he took monastic vows in November 1840 with the name Innocent, and in December he was consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurils and the Aleutians. He reached Sitka in the autumn of 1841.
Bishop and Archbishop, from Alaska to the Amur (1841–1867)
As bishop he travelled his vast diocese by ship, canoe, dog sled and reindeer sleigh; on his first great journey he covered more than 5,000 versts. In 1850 he became an archbishop. In 1853 he settled in Yakutsk, where he and a commission translated liturgical and scriptural texts into Yakut, and in July 1859 the first service in the Yakut language was held in Yakutsk’s Trinity Cathedral. He later moved to Blagoveshchensk and journeyed along the Amur and the Ussuri. In August 1861 his ship was driven by a storm onto a reef near Sakhalin, and he reached Tokyo by way of Japan, where he met the young hieromonk Nicholas Kasatkin, the future Saint Nicholas of Japan. In 1865 he was appointed a member of the Holy Synod.
When Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867, he worried about the future of the young American Church. He proposed moving the bishop’s residence to San Francisco, appointing a new vicar bishop who knew English, and translating the services into English.
Metropolitan of Moscow (1868–1879)
After Filaret’s death on November 19, 1867, Innocent was named his successor (the formal appointment came on January 5, 1868). The news distressed him, and he prayed on his knees through the night. He reached Moscow on May 25, 1868, and in his first address spoke with great humility, calling himself a humble tiller of a small plot in Christ’s field and a teacher of little ones. As metropolitan he:
- founded the Orthodox Missionary Society (1870) and helped establish the Japanese Orthodox Mission together with Nicholas Kasatkin;
- opened a home for retired clergy (1871) and a school of icon painting and crafts for orphans of the clergy (1873);
- worked to improve the living conditions of the clergy and called for a revision of the errors in the liturgical books (1876);
- proposed adding Saint Philip to the common commemoration of the Moscow saints (1875).
Past seventy and almost blind, he kept working, and his requests to retire were refused.
Miracles and Signs
In the case of Saint Innocent, three layers need to be distinguished: (1) his own written testimony, (2) the stories of Church tradition, and (3) historical events that faith reads as God’s providence. Our sources are not always careful about which layer they are drawing on.
The story of Akun Island (his own account). After nearly four years on Unalaska, Father John went to the island of Akun during Lent. The Aleuts were waiting for him on the shore, dressed in their festive best, and told him that their “shaman,” an old man named Ivan Smirennikov, had foretold his coming and described his appearance. The old man himself said that he was visited by “white men” in white garments, who had begun to appear to him after his baptism, and he offered to take the priest to meet them. Veniaminov declined. He feared pride and felt unworthy of such a meeting. He urged the Aleuts to stop calling the man a shaman. What is most characteristic of this story is that the saint himself did not use the sign to exalt himself.
Healings after baptism (tradition). Biographies relate that an old woman near death was carried to baptism on a stretcher but walked home by herself, leaning on a stick, and that a young man who had suffered from fits of madness since childhood was completely healed. The sources we reviewed give neither names nor years for these cases, so they belong to tradition.
Deliverances from danger. On the night of August 29, 1861, a storm tore his ship from its mooring off Sakhalin and drove it aground only a few meters from a stone reef; no one was hurt, and everyone was brought ashore in the morning (this is recorded in the Synod’s act). In 1842, when his sailing ship was in distress near Kodiak, he turned to the monk Herman, who had reposed on nearby Spruce Island, and, as he later related, the wind changed. That miracle belongs to Saint Herman, but Innocent was its witness.
Smallpox vaccination. An epidemic struck Sitka, in which Tlingit who refused vaccination by the Russians died in large numbers, while the Aleuts and Russians largely survived. Tradition sees in this a sign of providence that opened the Tlingit to the Gospel; the Synod’s act simply notes that he “taught the Tlingit how to vaccinate.” Historically, this was above all public-health work done by natural means, in which the Church sees an act of love.
After his death. In the sources we used, we found no reliable, dated catalog of miracles at the saint’s relics, with named witnesses. Search results often mix in the healings at the relics of Saint Innocent of Irkutsk (†1731) and the miracles of Saint Herman of Alaska; these are not miracles of the same saint. What is firmly documented is his glorification and the discovery of his relics in 1994. The sources we found do not describe whether the relics were incorrupt or in what condition they were found.
One thought from his letters (volume one, 1828–1855) helps in interpreting miracles: a miracle is a sign from God, given either to convince doubters or to comfort His servants, not to glorify the saint himself.
How He Died
On Holy Tuesday, March 27, 1879 (O.S.), the metropolitan asked to receive the Sacrament of Holy Unction. On Holy Thursday, March 29, after an early Liturgy, he received Holy Communion. The next day he asked Bishop Ambrose to come and read the Canon for the Departure of the Soul. He fell asleep in the Lord in Moscow on Holy Saturday, March 31, 1879, at about 2:45 a.m. He had left instructions that no eulogies be given at his funeral, only a sermon on the text “The steps of a man are ordered by the Lord” (Ps 36:23 in the Septuagint; Ps 37:23 in the Hebrew numbering, where the KJV reads “a good man”). This verse was his favorite. He was buried on April 5, 1879, in the Church of the Holy Spirit at the Holy Trinity–St Sergius Lavra, beside his mentor Filaret. Two inscriptions were carved on his gravestone, the second a petition to Christ: “Hear the prayers of Metropolitan Innocent and have mercy on us.”
Veneration, Glorification and Relics
The question of glorification was raised at the Synod of the Orthodox Church in America in March 1974, and on May 8 the American bishops appealed to the Church in Moscow. For three years the collected testimonies were studied, and on October 6, 1977 (September 23 O.S.) the Patriarch of Moscow and the Synod decided to number him among the saints. His official titles are “Metropolitan of Moscow, Enlightener of the Aleuts, Apostle to the Americas” (American Church) and “Apostle of Siberia and America” (Russian Church). His memory is kept three times a year: March 31 / April 13 (his repose), October 6 (his glorification), and October 18 N.S. (October 5 O.S.), together with the other Moscow hierarchs. His relics were discovered at the Trinity–St Sergius Lavra in October 1994, under the direction of the archaeologist S. Belyaev, and were later placed in a shrine in the lavra’s Dormition Cathedral.
The Day’s Troparia and Kontakion
The texts below are from the service of the Russian Orthodox Church for today. The translations are my own working translations from the Church Slavonic and Russian originals; for liturgical use they should be compared with the official text of your own church.
Troparion, Tone 1
Your proclamation went out into all the lands of the North, for those who received your word you taught in a manner pleasing to God. Those who knew not Christ you enlightened with the light of the Gospel, and you adorned the customs of men, O glory of Russia, holy hierarch, our father Innocent. Pray to Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Second Troparion, Tone 3
First teacher of the peoples once darkened by paganism, first herald to them of the way of salvation, you labored like an apostle in enlightening Siberia and America, holy hierarch, our father Innocent. Entreat the Master of all to grant peace to the world and great mercy to our souls.
Kontakion, Tone 4
You were a true and unfeigned teacher. What the Lord had commanded you did yourself, and you taught and admonished the children who came to godliness. The unbelieving you led to know the true faith, enlightening them by holy baptism. Therefore you rejoice with the apostles, receiving the honor of a herald of Christ.
The texts of the American Church. The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) uses its own English-language texts on Saint Innocent’s feast. Its troparion (Tone 4) praises him for his obedience to the will of God, for accepting dangers and tribulations, and for leading many peoples to the knowledge of the truth. Its second troparion (Tone 2) honors him as a preacher of the Gospel to the northern peoples in their own languages. Its kontakion (Tone 2) speaks of the providence and grace of God that he experienced in his life. The full official text is on the OCA website (oca.org, “Troparia and kontakia”).
Comparing the Sources: Where They Agree and Where They Differ
We used the act of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church as published by the Orthodox Church in America (originally 1978), the Russian-language biographies from Azbuka very and the Orthodox Encyclopedia, the English and Russian Wikipedia articles, and materials from the Trinity–St Sergius Lavra. The principal events (birth, Unalaska, consecration as bishop, appointment as metropolitan, death, glorification) are the same in every source. The disagreements are in details:
| Question | What the sources say | Our judgment |
|---|---|---|
| Appointment as Metropolitan of Moscow | OCA Synod act, Azbuka and Russian Wikipedia: January 5, 1868; English Wikipedia: November 19, 1867; Lavra page: January 28, 1868 | January 5, 1868 (three independent sources). November 19, 1867 is the day Filaret died. |
| Entering the seminary; the name Veniaminov | 1806 (Azbuka) or 1807 (OCA, Wikipedia); one summary ties the new name to his entry | He entered in 1806/1807. He received the name in 1814, since Bishop Veniamin died in 1814. |
| Ordination as deacon, 1817 | May 13 (Azbuka short life) or May 18 (OCA, Wikipedia) | May 18 (two sources). |
| Monastic tonsure, 1840 | November 29 (OCA, Wikipedia) or November 19 (Azbuka full life) | November 29 (two sources); the latter is probably a misprint. |
| Day of repose | March 31 O.S. = April 12, 1879 (the 12-day gap of the 19th century); in the 21st century observed on April 13 | Both are correct, depending on the calendar. |
| Common commemoration of the Moscow hierarchs | October 5 (OCA) or October 18 (Wikipedia, Azbuka, St George Boston) | October 5 O.S. = October 18 N.S.; OCA gives the Old Style date, while the other sources convert it to the modern calendar. |
| Discovery of the relics, 1994 | October 10, October 11, and October 12–13 | Found and uncovered October 10–11, identified October 12–13 (Belyaev); the sources describe different stages. |
| Titles | “Apostle of Siberia and America” (Russian Church), “Enlightener of the Aleuts, Apostle to the Americas” (OCA); “Equal-to-the-Apostles” appears in the akathist and in popular literature | In the sources we reviewed, the 1977 glorification itself gives him the titles “hierarch” and “apostle”; “Equal-to-the-Apostles” is honorific. |
| Troparia | Russian Church: troparia in Tones 1 and 3, kontakion in Tone 4; OCA: English-language troparia in Tones 4 and 2 | Two different liturgical traditions, not a contradiction. |
In sum, Saint Innocent’s life is historically very well documented, because his own letters and writings and the descriptions of eyewitnesses survive. The miracles are the most weakly supported part, where one must always distinguish tradition, the saint’s own testimony, and historical deliverances.
What Saint Innocent Teaches Today
- Respect for language and culture. He preached the Gospel to people in their own language and created a written form for it.
- Persuasion, not coercion. He waited until a person himself asked for baptism.
- Working with hands and mind. He was a teacher, builder, scholar and promoter of vaccination, and none of this overshadowed his prayer.
- Humility before honor. He did not want eulogies at his funeral; he wished people to reflect on God’s guidance.
- Trust in God’s guidance. “The steps of a man are ordered by the Lord” was the motto of his life and the message of his death.
Sources
- Orthodox Church in America: Act of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church (St Innocent), oca.org/fs/act-holy-synod-russian-orthodox-church-st-innocent
- Orthodox Church in America: Glorification of Saint Innocent; Repose of Saint Innocent; Troparia and kontakia (oca.org/saints)
- Азбука веры: Святитель Иннокентий (Вениаминов), митрополит Московский (azbyka.ru/days/sv-innokentij-veniaminov); Иннокентий Московский, Письма, vol. I
- Православная энциклопедия: Иннокентий (Вениаминов) (pravenc.ru/text/389619.html)
- Trinity–St Sergius Lavra (stsl.ru); Wikipedia (en, ru), Innocent of Alaska / Иннокентий (Вениаминов)
- OrthoChristian.com; saintherman.org (the 1842 episode with Herman)
Prayer to Saint Innocent
Holy hierarch Innocent, good shepherd and wise teacher, apostle of Siberia and America! You left a home where you had little and went where you were unknown, to proclaim Christ. You learned the languages of the people, built churches and schools, taught children, helped the sick, and never forgot quiet prayer.
Pray to the Lord for us, that we too may hear His call and answer it humbly. Grant us patience in trials, a love of truth, and a faith that leaves no one outside our care. Strengthen our Church, our priests and teachers, our children, and all who carry the word of the Gospel in the language of their people.
Help us, who live in narrow and anxious days, to trust the living word you left us: the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord. Lead us in peace through this life toward the Kingdom of Heaven, that together with you we may glorify the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Trough all this I want to declare this is all from God and to God. All Glory to Him!
