Hieromartyr Hermogenes (Dolganev), Bishop of Tobolsk

IMPORTANT DATE CORRECTION: all three previously listed dates (May 12, May 25, February 17) belong to an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT saint — Hieromartyr Patriarch Hermogenes of Moscow (17th c.: February 17 — day of repose, May 12/25 — day of his 1913 glorification) — and have nothing to do with this early-20th-century Tobolsk hieromartyr. They have been replaced with the correct date of martyric death. Visually confirmed: the image is a fragment of a group icon inscribed "St. Alexander, St. Hermogenes, St. Philip, St. Arkady" — "Hermogenes" among a group of Siberian New Martyrs, matching the subject.

Hieromartyr Hermogenes, born Georgy Efremovich Dolganev, was born April 25, 1858, in Novaya Odessa, Kherson province. Before taking monastic vows in 1890 he followed an unusual path — naval cadet corps, seminary, university coursework. He was rector of the Tiflis Theological Seminary (1893–1898), where, according to recollections, he expelled the young Iosif Jughashvili (the future Stalin) from among the students. Bishop of Volsk, then Saratov and Tsaritsyn (1901–1911) — an energetic church builder and active monarchist who founded a fraternal branch of the Union of the Russian People, which led to conflict with both the Holy Synod and Rasputin's circle and his forced retirement to Zhirovitsy Monastery in 1912.

Reinstated as bishop and sent to Tobolsk in 1917, he became a spiritual support to the imperial family under house arrest there. Arrested April 28, 1918, on charges of "counter-revolutionary activity," he was placed on a prison barge; on the night of June 16/29, 1918, Bolshevik guards tied a heavy stone (tradition also says an icon of the Mother of God) to him and threw him into the Tobol river while he continued to pray and bless his executioners.

He was locally glorified in 1998 (his relics were found the same year); included in the church-wide Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Jubilee Bishops' Council in August 2000.

His feast is kept on June 16/29; also August 20/September 2 (finding of relics).