Venerable Martyr Job of Ushcheye

Venerable Martyr Job, whose secular surname was Mozovsky (Mazovsky), son of Patrikiy, was born presumably in the second half of the 16th century; the exact place and date of birth are unknown. He was ordained hieromonk on November 10, 1608, by Isidor, then abbot (later metropolitan) of the Solovetsky Monastery. He spent about six years at Solovki before leaving the community.

In 1614 he departed Solovki for the Mezen River region and settled near the village of Leshukonskoye, at a place called Ushcheye ("gorge/defile"), where he founded a monastery, first building a chapel in honor of the Nativity of Christ. The community remained poor for a long time, until Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich granted it land with fishing rights, allowing Job to build a proper church and monastic cells; according to a 1623 census, the wooden Church of the Nativity was completed in 1622.

On August 5, 1628 (August 18, New Style), while the brethren were away haying, robbers who believed the monastery held hidden treasure attacked it. They tortured the elderly Job, who alone had remained, and then beheaded him. The brothers buried his body near the church.

After his death, some of the brotherhood dispersed to other monasteries, but the Ushchelsky community continued to exist.

He is venerated by the Russian Orthodox Church as a venerable martyr; he is commemorated on August 5/18 (day of death), and also on August 9/22 as part of the Synaxis of the Solovetsky Saints — in memory of his tonsure and spiritual formation at Solovki.

CONFIRMATION OF DISTINCTNESS FROM JOB OF UGOLKA: research confirmed that Venerable Job of Ushcheye and Venerable Job (Kundrya) of Ugolka (see the separate entry iov_ugolskiy) are entirely different people: the former is a 17th-century Russian hieromonk (tonsured at Solovki, killed in 1628) who founded a monastery in the Mezen area of the Arkhangelsk land; the latter is a 20th-century Subcarpathian archimandrite (d. 1985, canonized 2008) associated with a village near the historic Ugolsky Monastery in Subcarpathian Rus'. Different centuries, different regions (the Russian North vs. Subcarpathian Rus'/Western Ukraine), different circumstances of death (violent robbery-murder vs. natural death after a long life), and different canonization histories. They share only the common monastic name Job and superficially similar-looking, but unrelated, place-name epithets ("Ugolsky" and "Ushchelsky").