Igor: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Igor, baptized George, was a prince of Chernigov who lived when the princes of Rus’ were fighting one another for the throne of Kiev. In 1146 his brother Vsevolod died and left him Kiev, but within weeks he was defeated by Prince Izyaslav, taken captive and shut in a damp cell with no windows. Gravely ill and cut off from the world, he repented and asked to become a monk. He was tonsured with the name Gabriel in January 1147, recovered, and moved to the Theodorov monastery in Kiev, where he took the great schema with the name Ignatius and gave himself wholly to prayer and tears. In September of that year, when a plot of his kinsmen against Izyaslav came to light, an angry crowd broke into the church during the Divine Liturgy, where he stood praying before an icon of the Mother of God. They dragged him out and killed him on 19 September 1147, though he was a monk who no longer sought power. The Church honours him as a passion-bearer who died innocent. God glorified him with miracles, and in 1150 his brother Sviatoslav carried his relics to Chernigov and laid them in the Cathedral of the Saviour. The Church keeps this translation of his relics on 5 June (18 June on the Old Calendar), and his repose on 19 September. The faithful ask his prayers for peace between kin and for patience under injustice.

What the faithful pray for

• peace in families and among brothers
• an end to strife and civil war
• those who suffer innocently
• repentance and a change of heart
• those who live in prison or captivity