Hieromartyr
Hieromartyr Ioasaph (Zhevakhov), Bishop of Mogilev
1874 — †4 декабря 1937
Also known as: Иоасаф Могилёвский, Владимир Давидович Жевахов, кн. Владимир Жевахов
Hieromartyr Ioasaph (born Prince Vladimir Davidovich Zhevakhov) — a descendant of St. Ioasaph of Belgorod, Bishop of Dmitrievsk, vicar of the Kursk diocese, later titular Bishop of Mogilev; he endured imprisonment at Solovki and exile in the Narym region, was shot in Kursk oblast on December 4, 1937, and was canonized in 2002.
Hieromartyr Ioasaph was born on December 24, 1874, at the Linovitsa estate, Piryatin district, Poltava province, into the princely Zhevakhov family — according to tradition, a descendant of St. Ioasaph of Belgorod. Before the 1917 Revolution he was in state civil service.
In 1924 he was arrested in Kyiv and spent 7 months in prison; upon release he entered the Zverinets skete and was tonsured a monk with the name Ioasaph. On July 6, 1926, he was consecrated Bishop of Dmitrievsk, vicar of the Kursk diocese, by Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky).
He was imprisoned at the Solovki special-purpose camp (1926-1929), then served a three-year exile in the Narym region (Western Siberia). He later became titular Bishop of Mogilev.
On December 4, 1937, he was condemned to death by an extrajudicial NKVD troika in Kursk oblast and executed the same day.
He was canonized on July 17, 2002, by decree of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia for universal veneration.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON IDENTIFICATION: the original stub was a fully generic, unspecific text ("Bishop Ioasaph — a hierarch who labored in the Russian Church"), while its own text already called him "святитель" (hierarch), contradicting the stated category "righteous." The only identifying clue was the image filename "new_martyr_ioasaph_zhemanov_1.jpg" — the surname "Zhemanov" does not appear in any database of new martyrs (the full list of new martyrs on Wikipedia, the azbyka.ru synaxarion, PSTGU archives) and is most likely a typo/distortion of "Zhevakhov," phonetically and orthographically close (same syllable pattern). The "new_martyr" marker in the filename rules out St. Ioasaph of Belgorod (18th century, glorified in 1911, long before the "new martyr" category itself existed). The identity has been established as Bishop Ioasaph (Zhevakhov) with high confidence, based on the combination of the surname's phonetic similarity, the explicit "new_martyr" designation, and the stub text's own "Святитель" (hierarch) matching Zhevakhov's episcopal rank.