Hieromartyr Hieromartyr Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia

Hieromartyr Hermogenes (born Ermolai, c. 1530, reputedly a Don Cossack family) served as a parish priest before monastic tonsure; in 1587 he became archimandrite of the Transfiguration Monastery in Kazan, and in 1589 the first Metropolitan of Kazan. He chronicled the 1579 appearance of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, in whose discovery he personally took part.

In 1606 he was elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, and his patriarchate coincided with the height of the Time of Troubles. Hermogenes opposed the pretenders to the throne, exposed False Dmitry II, and — after Tsar Vasily Shuisky's overthrow and the Polish garrison's occupation of Moscow — refused to bless the election of the Catholic Polish prince Władysław unless he converted to Orthodoxy.

Imprisoned in the Chudov Monastery, he smuggled out letters calling Russians to rise against the occupiers, helping inspire the Second Volunteer Army of Minin and Pozharsky. For his defiance he was deprived of food and water and died of starvation on 17 February 1612, months before Moscow's liberation. Glorified in 1913.