Job of Pochayiv

Job of Pochayiv, known in the world as Ivan Ivanovych Zalizo (also rendered Zhelezo), was born in 1551 in the Pokuttya region of Galicia, then under the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and now in western Ukraine. From childhood he was noted for piety and a desire for the monastic life. At about twelve years of age he entered the Transfiguration Monastery at Uhornyky in Pokuttya, where he received the monastic tonsure with the name Job. He was later ordained to the priesthood as a hieromonk. Contemporary and later Orthodox accounts describe him as unusually strict in fasting, prayer, and manual labor, qualities that drew the attention of Orthodox patrons in Galicia and Volhynia during a period of intense confessional conflict in the Ruthenian lands.

In the later sixteenth century Prince Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski, the leading Orthodox magnate of the Polish-Lithuanian world, called Job to the Monastery of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross at Dubno. Job served there as abbot for more than two decades. The Union of Brest in 1596, by which a portion of the Ruthenian hierarchy entered communion with Rome, made Dubno and the Ostrogski circle a center of Orthodox resistance. Job is remembered as a defender of Eastern Orthodox doctrine and practice in that controversy, encouraging monastic discipline and the copying and dissemination of Orthodox liturgical and polemical texts. After many years at Dubno he withdrew, seeking a stricter eremitical life.

Around the first years of the seventeenth century Job settled at the then modest monastic community on the Pochayiv hill in Volhynia. The site had recently received, from the noblewoman Anna Hoyska, the icon of the Mother of God later known as the Pochayiv Icon. As hegumen, Job introduced a coenobitic rule and built up the brotherhood, transforming a small skete into a durable Orthodox monastery. The community faced pressure from Latin Catholic and Protestant landowners. In particular Andrzej Firlej, a Calvinist heir connected with Hoyska’s estate, seized the wonder-working icon and harassed the monks; after a prolonged legal struggle, in which Job took a leading part, the icon was restored to the monastery in 1644. Job himself often retired to a cave on the hill for solitary prayer and was regarded by the brethren as a wonder-worker and spiritual father. He copied books and left a reputation as an ascetic writer and elder, though he never held episcopal office.

In later life he received the Great Schema, taking the name John, though he continued to be venerated under his monastic name Job. He died at Pochayiv on 28 October 1651, at an advanced age traditionally given as one hundred years, and was buried in the cave he had used for prayer. In 1659 the grave was opened and the body was found incorrupt; local veneration as a saint followed. His relics remain at the Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra. The Orthodox churches commemorate him on 28 October, the day of his repose, and also on the anniversary of the uncovering of his relics (28 August in the Julian calendar). He is honored as an abbot, ascetic, and defender of Orthodoxy in the western Ruthenian lands.