Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan
The saints of the Kazan land — the first hierarchs Gurias, Barsanuphius and Herman sent to a newly-conquered khanate, the martyrs Peter and Stephen killed by their own neighbours for baptism, and Hermogenes, who found the Kazan icon there and died a patriarch's death in Moscow.
Kazan fell to Moscow in 1552, and the Church that followed the army into a Muslim khanate is the subject of this synaxis. Gurias was sent as its first archbishop with instructions to convert by persuasion and not by force, and with him went Barsanuphius, who had been a captive of the Tatars in his youth and knew the language, and Herman, who succeeded him in the see. Their relics were uncovered in 1595, and October 4 keeps that day.
The synaxis also holds those on the other side of the conversion. Peter and Stephen were Tatars of Kazan who received baptism and were killed for it by their own neighbours in the first years — the protomartyrs of that land, and a reminder that the mission produced martyrs as well as bishops.
Hermogenes was a parish priest in Kazan in 1579 when a girl's dream led to the finding of the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan; he carried it from the ground and wrote its account. He ended as patriarch of Moscow, starved to death in the Time of Troubles, and is numbered both here and among the hierarchs of Moscow.