Venerable Simeon Polotsky

Simeon of Polotsk (secular name Samuil Yemelyanovich Petrovsky-Sitnianovich; 1629–1680) was a leading churchman, theologian, poet, playwright, and educator under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Born in Polotsk, he studied at the Kiev-Mohyla Collegium and possibly the Jesuit academy in Vilnius. In the mid-1650s he took Orthodox monastic vows and taught at the fraternal school of Bogoyavlensky Monastery in Polotsk. From 1664 he lived in Moscow, tutoring the tsar's children — Alexei, Feodor, and Sophia, and reportedly the young Peter. He founded the school at Zaikonospassky Monastery, forerunner of the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, Russia's first institution of higher learning. He produced the first printed verse translation of the Psalter, the collections "Vertograd Mnogotsvetny" and "Rifmologion," and Russia's earliest school dramas. He died 25 August 1680 and was buried at Zaikonospassky Monastery. Despite his immense contribution to Russian enlightenment, he was never formally canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church; some of his theological positions were posthumously condemned by Patriarch Joachim as tainted with Catholic error. He should not be confused with the distinct Saint Simeon, Bishop of Tver (of Polotsk princely origin, d. 1289, feast 3/16 February).