Gennady (Archbishop of Novgorod)

Gennadius (Gennady, Russian: Геннадий; died 4 December 1505) was Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Pskov from 1484 to 1504.

He was most instrumental in fighting the Heresy of the Judaizers and is famous for compiling the first complete codex of the Bible in Slavic in 1499, known as the Gennady Bible. Gennady is a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. His feast day is 4 December OS/17 December in the Gregorian Calendar.

Gennady was from the Gonzov boyar clan of Moscow and was, prior to his archiepiscopate, hegumen of the Chudov Monastery in the Moscow Kremlin. His immediate predecessor in Novgorod, Sergei, served less than a year and was recalled and confined to the Chudov Monastery apparently due to mental illness.

Gennady was named Archbishop of Novgorod in Moscow and placed in office on 12 December 1484, the first Novgorodian prelate not chosen by lots since 1359. He arrived in Novgorod in January 1485 with the task (as had been Sergei's) of bringing the newly conquered Novgorodian church (the city had been brought under direct Muscovite control only in 1478 and the last locally elected archbishop, Feofil, had been removed only in 1480) more in line with Muscovite ecclesiastical practices. He faced opposition from the local clergy by his commemoration of several Muscovite saints, but dealt with this opposition by including several local saints in his commemoration.

Gennady's main difficulty during his archepiscopate, however, was rooting out the Judaizer heresy from Novgorod and also Moscow, where it had spread when several Novgorodian clergymen were transferred to the capital. He is said to have borrowed methods from the Spanish Inquisition, admiring how the King of Spain had dealt with heterodoxy in his kingdom, and he burned several heretics with the support of the grand prince and metropolitan.

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