Synaxis of saints
Synaxis Synaxis of Moscow Saints
установлен в 1997 году
Synaxis of Moscow Saints — a collective commemoration of all saints connected with Moscow and the Moscow land, established in 1997 for the city's 850th anniversary, encompassing hierarchs, right-believing princes, fools-for-Christ, ascetics, and 20th-century new martyrs.
NOTE ON ENTRY TYPE: this card represents a collective feast rather than an individual historical person, so a description of the feast's history and scope is given instead of a biography.
The Synaxis of Moscow Saints is broader than the narrower and older Synaxis of Moscow Hierarchs (established 1596; see the "Moscow hierarchs" cards). The general, all-encompassing Synaxis of Moscow Saints as a distinct annual feast was established in 1997 with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II and a Synodal decision — timed to mark the 850th anniversary of Moscow's founding.
The Synaxis gathers saints of very varied rank connected with the city across seven centuries: metropolitans and patriarchs; right-believing princes (e.g., Right-believing Daniel of Moscow, Right-believing Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy); fools-for-Christ (e.g., Blessed Basil the Blessed, Blessed Maxim of Moscow, Blessed John the Blessed); monastic ascetics, elders, and abbots/abbesses of Moscow's monasteries; and — forming the largest single group — 20th-century new martyrs and confessors connected with the Moscow diocese, its parishes, or its prisons. The full commemorated list runs into the hundreds of names, making this one of the largest regional synaxes of the Russian Church, structurally related to the Synaxis of Radonezh Saints and the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.
The feast is movable, kept on the Sunday nearest September 11 (New Style), often coinciding with Moscow City Day.