Germogen (redirected from Patriarch Hermogenes)

Germogen 

Born before 1530; died Feb. 17, 1612, in Moscow. Russian church leader and political figure; patriarch from 1606 to 1612. Took monastic vows in 1587; became archimandrite of the Spaso-Preobrazhenskii Monastery in Kazan and metropolitan of Kazan in 1589.

Germogen was an active promoter of the policy of forcible conversion to Christianity of non-Russian peoples of the Volga region. From 1605 to 1612 he voiced the interests of the Orthodox Church most consistently, for he understood that the church’s power depended on the tsar’s support. Germogen demanded that Marina Mnishek be christened in the Orthodox Church, incurring the dissatisfaction of False Dmitrii I. After Vasilii Shuiskii was elected tsar, Germogen was made patriarch of Moscow. During the antifeudal peasant revolt led by I. I. Bolotnikov in 1606-07, Germogen mobilized the forces of the church to struggle against the insurgents, who were declared heretics and excommunicated.

After Shuiskii was overthrown in 1610, Germogen proposed the candidacy of Mikhail Romanov to the throne in opposition to the Polish prince Wladyslaw. After Wladyslaw was made tsar, Germogen demanded that he convert to the Orthodox faith. In late 1610, Germogen opposed the proposal of the boyars to swear fealty to the Polish king Sigismund III. In late December 1610, during the occupation of Moscow by the Polish feudal lords, Germogen sent appeals to the cities of Russia calling for an uprising of all the people against the foreign interventionists. He counted on the support of the armed units of P. P. Liapunov. The Poles placed Germogen under house arrest at first and later confined him in a dungeon in Chudov Monastery. He refused to try to persuade the people’s volunteer forces of K. Minin and D. M. Pozharskii to remain loyal to Wladyslaw. The interventionists starved Germogen to death in prison. The historiography of the Russian nobility and bourgeoisie has idealized Germogen, falsely claiming that his appeals served as the initiating factor in the formation of the Nizhnii Novgorod volunteer force.

REFERENCES

Tsarevskii, A. “Germogen, sviateishii patriarkh Vserossiiskii. …” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik, March 1907.
Kedrov, S. Zhizneopisanie sviateishego Germogena. Moscow, 1912.
Platonov, S. F. “O proiskhozhdenii patriarkha Germogena.” In his book Stat’i po russkoi istorii. St. Petersburg, 1903.

S. M. KASHTANOV