Gennady of Novgorod
Russian saint and bishops
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.
Biography
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. Sergei 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.
The public source identifies “Gennady of Novgorod” as russian saint and bishops. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gennady, Novgorod and Russian.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2639285. VIAF identifies the subject as 24124167. The Library of Congress control number is nb2007003973. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1505, 1484, 1504 and 1499.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gennady of Novgorod” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.