Stephen of Perm

Stephen of Perm (Russian: Стефан Пермский, romanized: Stefan Permsky; Komi: Перымса Степан, romanized: Perymsa Stepan; c. 1340 – 26 April 1396)^[2][3][4] was a Russian Orthodox bishop, painter and missionary.^[3] He is known as being one of the most successful missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church.^[5] Stephen is credited with the conversion of the Komi peoples to Christianity. He settled in Ust-Vym and became the first bishop of Perm in 1383.^[6][7]

Saint Stephen of Perm
Saint Stephen on his way to Moscow, illumination from a 17th-century manuscript
The Enlightener of Perm Bishop of Perm
Born	c. 1340 Ustyug
Died	26 April 1396 Moscow
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church Roman Catholic Church^[1]
Canonized	1549
Feast	26 April

Stephen also created the Old Permic script,^[3] which makes him the founding father of Permian written tradition. "The Enlightener of Perm" or the "Apostle of the Permians", as he is sometimes called, is commemorated by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches on 26 April.^[8] Epiphanius the Wise wrote about his life in The Life of Stephen of Perm.^[9]

Life

 

Zyrian Trinity icon painted by Stephen of Perm, late 14th-century

Stephen was born around 1340 in the town of Ustyug in northern Russia.^[10][11] The region was populated by the native Komi, also known as Zyrians or western Permians, with a minority of Russians.^[3] His father was a cathedral cleric in the town.^[3] Early on, Stephen mastered the reading and writing of the Russian language and became a lector.^[3]

Stephen took his monastic vows in Rostov, where he learned Greek and learned his trade as a copyist.^[12] He befriended Epihanius, who became the biographer of Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314–1392) and later Stephen as well.^[3] He also befriended Sergius, though he would not become a disciple of his.^[3] Around 1370, Stephen began creating an alphabet for the Zyrians, without the influence of Russian on it, despite the prevalence of the trilingual heresy in some Byzantine and Russian circles.^[3]

In 1376, he voyaged to lands along the Vychegda and Vym rivers, and it was then that he engaged in the conversion of the Zyrians (Komi peoples).^[12] Rather than imposing Latin or Church Slavonic on the indigenous pagan populace, as all the contemporary missionaries did, Stephen learnt their language and traditions and worked out a distinct writing system for their use, creating the second oldest writing system for a Uralic language. Although his destruction of pagan idols (e.g., holy birches) earned him the wrath of some Permians, the metropolitan of Kiev, Pimen, created the bishopric of Perm in 1383 and consecrated Stephen as its first bishop.^[12][13]

The effect of the new bishopric and the conversion of the Vychegda Perm threatened the control that Novgorod had been enjoying over the region's tribute.^[12] In 1385, Aleksei, the archbishop of Novgorod (r. 1359–1388), sent a Novgorodian army to oust the new establishment, but the new bishopric, with the help of the city of Ustyug, was able to defeat it.^[12] In 1386, Stephen visited Novgorod, and the city and its archbishop formally acknowledged the new situation.^[12] Subsequently, the region's tribute became the luxury of Moscow. These events had immense repercussions for the future of northern Russia, and formed but one part of a larger trend which saw more and more of the Finnic North and its precious pelts passing from the control of Novgorod to Moscow.^[12]

Stephen died in Moscow on 26 April 1396.^[6] He was canonized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1549.^[7][14]

Legacy

The historian Serge Aleksandrovich Zenkovsky wrote that Stephen of Perm, along with Epiphanius the Wise, Sergius of Radonezh, and the great painter Andrei Rublev, signified "the Russian spiritual and cultural revival of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century".^[15] Indeed, Stephen's life encapsulates both the political and religious expansion of "Muscovite" Russia.^[7] Stephen's life was in fact commemorated in the writings of the aforementioned Epiphanius, who famously wrote the Panegyric to Saint Stephen of Perm, a text that praises Stephen for his evangelical activities, and styles him the "creator of Permian letters".^[16]

References

1. Martyrologium Romanum (2004)
2. Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980-1584, (Cambridge, 1995), p. 225
3. Johnston, William M. (4 December 2013). Encyclopedia of Monasticism. Routledge. p. 1202. ISBN 978-1-136-78716-4.
4. Scott, Hamish M. (2015). The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750. Oxford University Press. p. 759. ISBN 978-0-19-959725-3.
5. "Saint Stephen of Perm". www.britannica.com.
6. Kidd, B. J. (6 August 2013). The Churches of Eastern Christendom. Routledge. p. 377. ISBN 978-1-136-21278-9.
7. Owen, Weldon (9 October 2012). The Book of Saints: A Day-By-Day Illustrated Encyclopedia. Weldon Owen International. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-68188-719-7.
8. Beutner, Dawn Marie (2020). Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year. Ignatius Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-1-62164-341-8.
9. Parry, Ken; Melling, David J.; Brady, Dimitri; Griffith, Sidney H.; Healey, John F. (8 November 2000). The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-631-18966-4.
10. Greene 2014, p. 142.
11. op. cit., p. 226
12. loc. cit.
13. Martin, Janet (6 December 2007). Medieval Russia, 980-1584. Cambridge University Press. p. 250. ISBN 978-0-521-85916-5.
14. Butler, Alban; Burns, Paul (1 January 1999). Butler's Lives of the Saints: April. A&C Black. p. 189. ISBN 978-0-86012-253-1.
15. Serge A. Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, Revised Edition, (New York, 1974), p. 259
16. op. cit., p. 261

Bibliography

•   "Стефан Пермский" . Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (in Russian). 1906.
• Ferguson, Charles. 1971. St. Stefan of Perm and applied linguistics. (Originally published in 1967, in To Honor Roman Jakobson, ed. by Morris Halle, pp. 643–653. The Hague: Mouton. Also reprinted in 1968 Language Problems of Developing Nations, ed. by Joshua Fishman, Charles Ferguson, and J. Das Gupta, pp. 27–35. New York Wiley and Sons.) Language Structure and Language Use: Essays by Charles Ferguson, ed. by Answar S. Dil, pp. 197–218. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Greene, Robert H. (3 September 2014). Orthodox Christianity in Imperial Russia: A Source Book on Lived Religion. Indiana University Press. pp. 139–151. ISBN 978-0-253-01318-7.
• Martin, Janet, Medieval Russia, 980-1584, (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 225–6
• Zenkovsky, Serge A. (ed.), Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, Revised Edition, (New York, 1974), pp. 259–62

External links

• Medieval "Life" of Saint Stephen (in Russian)
• A chapter from "The Saints of Ancient Rus", by Georgy Fedotov (in Russian)
• Life of Saint Stephen, with illustrations (in Russian)