Early Life and Monastic Formation
Martyrius was born with the baptismal name Menas in Veliki Luki, in what is now the Pskov region of Russia. By one account he began his education at about the age of eight but found learning difficult, mastering the Psalter only with effort; by the age of ten he had been orphaned by the death of his parents, named in his Life as Cosmas and Stephanida.
He frequently visited the Church of the Annunciation, where a priest named Boris befriended him. When Boris was widowed, he entered monastic life and received the name Bogolep. Menas followed him into the monastery and was tonsured with the name Martyrius. For seven years the elder Bogolep and his disciple Martyrius shared one cell, with Martyrius serving as cellarer, treasurer, and altar server (ponomar).
Their ascetic rule was severe: they ate only once a day, fulfilled their rule of prayer in their cell after the church services, and worked through the night milling corn. While living in greater solitude, Martyrius supported himself by weaving bast shoes, and by tradition was ordained a priest around 1570.
Foundation of the Trinity Zelenets Monastery
Counseled in dreams and visions that he would be permitted to live in the wilderness wherever God blessed, Martyrius withdrew to the island of Zelenets, a forested location set amid swamps. There he built a chapel for the Holy Trinity and placed in it his icons of the Trinity and of the Tikhvin Mother of God.
By the accounts of his Life, he established the Trinity Zelenets Monastery, erecting a church in the name of the Holy Trinity in the midst of the swamps; one source dates the foundation to about 1582 and records that he governed a community of twelve monks. A heated church honoring the Annunciation was later built with the support of the boyar Theodore Syrkov.
The monastery received further patronage after Martyrius, by tradition, restored to life the son of Simeon Bekbulatovich, a former ruler of Kasimov, at Tver in 1595, using prayer and his icons. In gratitude Simeon funded a church honoring the Tikhvin Icon and Saint John Chrysostom, and Tsar Theodore endowed the monastery with land in the same year.
Visions
Martyrius's Life records several visions. While in the bell tower he is said to have seen the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God appearing in a fiery column, and in the wilderness he saw in a dream a pillar of fire standing toward Tikhvin with the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos at its summit. The saints Abramius and Ephraim are also said to have appeared to him in dreams, reassuring him that he would be permitted to settle in the wilderness wherever God blessed him.
Repose and Veneration
Saint Martyrius died on March 1, 1603, after extensive spiritual preparation; his Life relates that he prepared his own grave and coffin, by one account spending a year and six months in a self-dug grave. His relics were buried beneath the crypt of the Trinity church of the monastery he had founded.
Metropolitan Cornelius later compiled the service and the account of his Life. His memory is celebrated on March 1 and November 11.
