The life of St Jonah of Moscow
He is remembered above all for a single night in 1451, when Tatar forces appeared without warning before Moscow, burning the countryside around it and preparing to storm the walls. Jonah led the city's defenders not with weapons but with prayer, walking the walls in tearful procession pleading for deliverance, and the attackers, thrown suddenly into confusion, fled without ever breaching the city. In thanksgiving Jonah raised a church of his own within his courtyard, dedicated to the Placing of the Robe of the Theotokos, to mark that unlikely rescue.
He died in 1461, and reports of healing soon followed at his grave; when his relics were found incorrupt in 1472 they were placed in the Dormition Cathedral of the Kremlin, an event kept on its own day in May. This June date sits alongside his March repose and his place within the wider Synaxis of the Hierarchs of Moscow honored each October, three further points in the calendar where the same shepherd is remembered.
