Gallery

Saints Withburga and Fursey

As two 'local' saints these have a special place on our ikon screen and in our veneration. They are a strong reminder to us that the saints of Western Europe who lived before the mid-eleventh century are not just 'Western' saints but are saints of the universal Orthodox Church.

St Withburga was an East Anglian saint who lived in a hermitage very close to Walsingham, at Holkham, and who after her father's death in AD 653 used her inherited wealth to build a convent at East Dereham. After her death in AD 743 she was buried in the abbey grounds, and tradition has it that she was disinterred 55 years later and found to have avoided decomposition, so that these remains were removed into the church she had built. 

In AD 974 Brithnoth, the abbot of Ely, seeing how pilgrims flocked and brought wealth to Dereham, plotted to steal her mortal remains to make Ely the centre of pilgrims seeking to visit her body.  Brithnoth arrived with armed men and organised a feast.  Having got the locals thoroughly inebriated he and those with him made for home with the body of Withburga.  When the Dereham men sobered up, they discovered the theft and set off to recover her. They were however, unable to cross the swamps that surrounded Ely, and Withburga's relics remained until scattered at the time of the reformation.

When the Dereham men returned home, it is said that they found a spring of water to have developed in what had been her tomb. Taking the view that the water was compensation for the loss of their saint, they kept attracting pilgrims to drink from the water. This spring has allegedly "never run dry" and even today remains a tourist attraction.

St Fursey was an Irish monk, born the grandson of a pagan king (probably in practice a wealthy community leader rather than anything else more grand).  His mother was a Christian and daughter of another "king", and he was baptised by Brendan (himself later canonised) who was his great uncle, and in whose monastery he went to live at an early age, in time building his own monastery. In time he had a series of visions before founding two more monasteries.

Meanwhile, here in East Anglia, King Sigeberht set about extending Christianity as the local religion. Fursey arrived with a few others, and after meeting Sigeberht were given enough land to establish an abbey. The land given to him was an abandoned Roman fort, probably in what we now call Burgh castle.

The approach of war in AD 648 encouraged Fursey to leave for the Britanny area of what we now call France, where he died in AD 650.

St Paraskeva of Iasi

Paraskeva of Iasi, (in Romania),is also known as Parascheva of the Balkans, of Serbia, of Belgrade and the New. She was born around the beginning of the 11th Century and would, if she lived today, be seen as a teenage runaway.

A daughter to a wealthy high status Christian family living in Epivat (now in Turkey) by the Marmara coast, she was in church at the time she paid particular attention to the words “Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me” and spent considerable hours thereafter reflecting on what they really meant.  She began giving away the expensive clothes, her parents had given her, to poor people.  Actions about which her parents weren't especially thrilled. They had worked hard for their lifestyle and couldn't afford for her to be giving it all up to strangers.  All efforts to encourage her to desist and refrain fell on deaf ears.  It would be easy to think that there were many arguments and raised voices over her decisions and in the end Paraskeva ran off to Constantinople and spent as much time as she could in prayer.

Her parents, meanwhile and quite reasonably, were even more upset about losing their (disobedient) daughter than they were about her giving away her possessions, and followed after her in 'hot pursuit' travelling from city to city trying to track her down.  Paraskeva, reckoning she could only elude them for so long before they caught up with her, moved on to Chalcedon and then again to Heraclea Pontica near the Black Sea.  There she lived an ascetic life and believed she saw visions, one of which instructed her to go to Jerusalem.  

After some time in Jerusalem she joined a convent in the Jordanian desert before returning to Constantinople. By the time she was 25 she had moved to the village of Katikratia where she lived till she died at the age of 27.  Years later a monk dug up remains he believed to be hers, and via the church in which she last lived these were moved to Tirnovo, in Bulgaria, then to Belgrade, in Serbia, and finally to Constantinople. In 1641, they were given as a gift to the Prince of Moldavia, Vasile Lupu, in recognition of his support for the Ecumenical Patriarchy of Constantinople. These remains have been in Iasi ever since. She is venerated as the Protector of Iasi and all of Moldavia, and in the Balkans her memory is a major festival each year on October 14th.

Saints John Baptist and Seraphim of Sarov

Ikons are 'windows into eternity' and so it is quite proper for two saints who lived almost two millennia apart to be represented together. St. John the Baptist really is too well known to need further description, besides he has already been described elsewhere in this gallery, so let us turn our attention to Seraphim.

Seraphim was born Prokhor Moshnin July 19th 1754, in Kursk.  As a ten year old he fell ill, had a vision of Mary, the Mother of God, telling him he would recover. Several days later a religious procession passed his house carrying a special ikon of Mary. Upon standing to watch it he made a rapid recovery. During the rest of his childhood he developed an interest in Christianity and found a liking in withdrawing from the family to pray. At 18 he entered the Sarov monastery.

He took the ascetic aspect of the monk's life with great seriousness, eating as little as would keep him alive. Taking to a forest to pray and live as a hermit, he again became seriously ill, needing three years to recover. He recorded that he again saw a vision of Mary and again she promised he would recover.

He took full vows in 1726, at the age of 27, taking the name Seraphim. After being ordained Deacon and then Priest, he withdrew again, in 1794, to the forest.  After a savage beating by thieves, who stole very little as he had very little to steal, he pleaded for mercy when they were eventually caught and brought to justice. The beating, however, was so brutal he spent the rest of his life hunched, needing a stick to help him walk.

His evident holiness drew thousands of people to him. He died 14th January 1833, and remains one of the most important and most loved saints of Russia.

St Silouan the Athonite

Born Simeon Ivanovich Antonov in 1866, he holds a rare position that he was caught by photography and his image is available.  Thus ikonic representations of him are fairly consistent. An ascetic he spent much of his life in prayer, he was seen by his contemporaries to be an elder. Thomas Merton described him as the "most authentic monk of the 20th Century".  One of his more memorable sayings was "Those who dislike and reject their fellow-man are impoverished in their being. They do not know the true God, who is all-embracing love". 

He died on September 24th 1938.