The life of St Germanus of Kazan
When his own teacher, Gurias, the first archbishop of the newly established see of Kazan, died in 1564, Germanus was chosen to succeed him, and he continued to live with the same simplicity he had kept as a hermit even after taking up that office.
He proved unwilling to stay silent when Tsar Ivan the Terrible seized noble estates and imposed the harsh policy of repression known as the oprichnina, openly calling on the tsar to abolish it. That stand cost him dearly: he fell into disgrace and was driven from Moscow, and he died not long after, around 1567 or 1568, in circumstances that accounts of his life describe differently from one another. He was buried in Moscow, and his relics were later moved to the Bogoroditsky Monastery at Sviyazhsk, where they remain, honored as those of a shepherd who would not stay quiet in the face of a ruler's cruelty.
