St. Evfimii II, Archbishop of Novgorod, passed away on this day in 1458. It is only too human to treat our time as the most difficult time to be alive. This is perhaps because human life is so fragile. No one of us has died and all we have known yet has been defined by the parameters of our physical existence. Picture this. In 1438–1439, the unionist council in Ferrara and Florence took place, causing division in the Byzantine Church. In 1448, the Church in Muscovy proclaimed independence from the Great Church of Constantinople. In 1453, Sultan Mehmet II (Fatih) took over the Queen City. In 1477–1478, Muscovy waged a successful war against the principality of Novgorod. In 1480, Muscovy was liberated for good from Mongol rule, but 200 years of living “with Mongol passports” came with a price. In 1492, the Church ran out of pre-calculated dates for Pascha, and the first Russian heresy of the “Judaizers” appeared. We don’t choose where and when to be born. God destined to St. Evfimii to be born amid the decline of Novgorodian independence. He was born at the end of the fourteenth century into a priest’s family; after many prayers, he became the only child of a couple that had been childless before. John, St. Evfimii’s baptismal name, joined one of the Novgorod monasteries and became a successor to Archbishop Evfimii I. Contrary to Byzantine canon law provisions, but according to the ancient local custom, Evfimii II was elected by lot. At this time, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, elevated through ties with Mongols, had been gradually acquiring the status of a central power, which had previously belonged to the Mongol Khan. As a result, it took Moscow’s Metropolitan four and half years to approve Evfimii II as the archbishop of Novgorod. In its turn, the Novgorodian archbishopric worked hard on extending its control over Pskov. Archbishop Evfimii was de facto the head of the Novgorod government, and this did not help him vis-à-vis Moscow. When he supported Prince Dmitrii Shemiaka in his dispute over power with Great Prince Basil II, Saint Evfimii became persona non grata in Moscow and had to find a way to be reconciled with St. Jonah, Metropolitan of Kiev, who reigned over the Russian Church from Moscow. St. Evfimii did a lot to consolidate the Novgorodian legacy (in just less than a hundred years, Novgorod lost its historical status, after being destroyed by Moscow). He canonized local saints, built churches and ordered a revision of the Russian chronicles through a local political lens. He was canonized at the council of 1549 during the reign of Ivan IV, the last Grand Prince of Muscovy and the first Russian tsar, who did away with the last shreds of independence of “Lord Novgorod the Great” (Gospodin Velikii Novogord). Source: A.A.Turilov, M.A.Shibaev, “Evfimii II,” Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia. | 
