Hierarch Job, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia

Hierarch Job (secular name Ivan) was born around 1525 in Staritsa to a posad family; he was educated at the Staritsky Dormition Monastery, where in 1556 he was tonsured a monk with the name Job. He served as abbot of the Staritsky Monastery (1569-1571), archimandrite of Moscow's Simonov Monastery (1571), then of the royal Novospassky Monastery (1575). He was consecrated Bishop of Kolomna on April 16, 1581, elevated to Archbishop of Rostov (1586), and soon after — with the support of Boris Godunov — installed as Metropolitan of Moscow (1586/1587).

On January 26 (February 5), 1589, Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople installed him as the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia — an event marking the elevation of the Russian Church from the status of a metropolia to that of a patriarchate, fifth in honor among the Eastern Patriarchates.

During the Time of Troubles, he firmly refused to recognize False Dmitry I as the legitimate heir to the throne, anathematizing his supporters. After the death of Tsar Feodor Ioannovich and the impostor's seizure of power, Hierarch Job was arrested, forcibly stripped of his rank, and exiled (c. 1605) to the Staritsky Dormition Monastery, where he had once begun his monastic path. He was later rehabilitated under Tsar Vasily Shuisky and visited Moscow, but declined restoration to the patriarchate due to blindness.

He reposed on June 19, 1607, in Staritsa. His relics were later found incorrupt and in 1652 were translated to the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.

His church-wide glorification was carried out by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on October 9, 1989 — during celebrations marking the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus' (he had earlier been venerated, from 1979, as part of the Synaxis of Tver Saints).

IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS: the original stub erroneously listed "era: BC" and dated him "BC" — an obvious error for a 16th-17th century churchman, corrected to AD. A contradiction between fields was also resolved: the feast_days field contained an unconfirmed "May 6/19," while the correct dates (June 19/July 2 — repose; April 5/18 — translation of relics) were already present in the stub's own text. The category has been corrected from righteous to hierarch — a Patriarch, not a lay righteous person.